[ath9k-devel] WPA and Apple devices

[Marek Lindner <lindner_marek@yahoo.de>]

Hi,

> These pcap files were captured while VAP#1 was WPA encrypted and VPA#2 was 
> unencrypted. An Apple notebook tried to connect to the router on VAP#1:
> apple-vap1.pcap -> captured packets on the notebook itself
> vap1_vpa2_nowpa.pcap -> captured packets from the router (wifi interface)
> mon_vpa2_nowpa.pcap -> captured packets from the router (hostapd monitor 
> interface)
> 
> As you can see the Apple device even sends a few DHCP/DNS/etc packets until
> it  suddenly sends a disconnect request. This made me think it is not
> related to hostapd but I could be wrong here.

I managed to narrow down the whole issue: First of all, the connection issues 
are not limited to Apple devices. I found a few Linux boxes showing exactly 
the same behavior. Furthermore, I noticed that whenever a device has a 
connection issue the AR9285 would not send any beacons. Some devices / wifi 
drivers seem to manange connecting to an AP without any beacons and others 
don't. At this point I am pretty convinced that the missing AP beacons are 
causing the connection problems.

But there is more: I was able to test the prorietary Atheros driver on the 
AR9285 which works fine. In addition, I tested the same software stack 
(mac80211 / atk9k / hostapd / etc) on the bullet m running an AR9280 and it 
also is working fine. This leads me to the conclusion that the Atheros driver 
handles the beaconing for the AR9285 (at least slightly) different. Is there 
anyone capable of taking a peak into the code ? Any suggestion how to debug 
the missing beacons ?

Regards,
Marek