Arch Linux

wmclaffe

Member

Registered: 2007-07-01

Posts: 2

Wireless network randomly disconnects/disassociates

I've been having a problem with my wireless network recently. lshwd reports my card is detected as

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corp.|BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (bcm43xx)

I'm using ndiswrapper and wpa_supplicant to access our router (I have bcm43xx blacklisted and disabled in my rc.conf, and in rc.local I have "rmmod bcm43xx" just in case). The connection will be fine for a seemingly random amount of time, but then I will start to notice hangs and when this happens, iwconfig reports that my card is not associated with any access point. When I run "sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid <essid>" sometimes it will work, but often it will remain unassociated. When this happens, dmesg reveals:

ndiswrapper (iw_set_freq:380): setting configuration failed (00010003)
ndiswrapper (iw_set_freq:380): setting configuration failed (00010003)
ndiswrapper (iw_set_freq:380): setting configuration failed (00010003)
ndiswrapper (iw_set_freq:380): setting configuration failed (00010003)...

The only workaround I've found for this has been waiting and retrying. This happens often enough that I made a script to automate the process a little:

sudo killall dhcpcd wpa_supplicant smbd 
sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid <essid> &&
sudo wpa_supplicant -Dwext -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -Bw -dd &&
sudo dhcpcd -A -I \"\" -h will -t 10 wlan0 &&
ifconfig

Could it be a problem with the way I'm connecting (the script), my card, my software, or the router itself? I'm very confused about this, and getting kicked offline randomly and having to wait a random amount of time to reconnect is really aggravating, so I'd appreciate your help. Let me know if you need more info.

xyn

Member

From: Las Vegas

Registered: 2007-08-28

Posts: 7

Website

Re: Wireless network randomly disconnects/disassociates

Hi There.

I would guess that its either the router, or the wireless card itself. I used to have a Netgear WGT624 that did this quite alot. I found it much faster to reboot the router though to get it to respond . Right now, I've got a Fonera (ebay, ~$20) that I've stuck DD-WRT on, and its been rock solid with all four of the machines I've got running Arch connected to it, and doing streaming over it. If you've got a neighbor with a wireless router I'd ask to see if he'll let you test it out, and see if it exhibits the same issues, then depending on what it does, test either the card or another workstation connecting to the router itself. Have you also considered it may be interference from another source too? may want to switch channels on the card and the router and see if that helps.