[ath9k-devel] AR9285: Possible intermittent connection drop-outs

["Torquil Macdonald Sørensen" <torquil@gmail.com>]

Hi guys!

Essential, I'd like recommendations as to which ath9k debugging options I would 
want to use to effectively diagnose the following problem:

I'm having some problems with my AR9285 based wireless card on an Asus X5DID 
laptop, using Linux 2.6.35.2 on Debian Sid. I'm connecting to a D-Link DIR-615 
wireless router with the newest firmware.

The problem is: sometimes, even though Network Manager displays a good 
connection strength, I loose communication with the router and therefore also 
the internet. In this state, which is temporary, I cannot ping the router.

Typical scenario:

While I am browsing, suddenly Firefox is no longer able to receive web pages. I 
typically try to ping the router at 192.168.0.1, but get no reply or very slow 
replies and many lost pings.

I have a sneaking suspicion that my pinging efforts are able to "wake" the 
connection up to some degree, since often times web pages are able to load just 
after I start to ping.

The problem fixes itself, usually after a few minutes. But the problem will come 
and go quite randomly. Network Manager never notices any of this. It happily 
displays a good connection all the time.

Most of the time everything works fine. I'm quite certain that wireless in the 
Windows 7 OS on the same laptop works flawlessly, so its not a hardware or 
router problem. The other guy here uses Windows XP with a USB wireless card and 
never has similar problems.

I have recompiled Linux to get some debugging going, but there are lots of debug 
options and some of them result in a massive amount of information being logged. 
So I'd like to get some recommendation as to which debugging option I should try 
first, out of these:

http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath9k/debug

The settings on the router are:

Enable auto channel selection: on
Transmission rate: Best (auto)
WMM Enable: on (wireless QoS)

Security mode: WPA/WPA2 Wireless Security (enhanced)
Cipher type:	AUTO (TKIP/AES)
PSK/EAP:	PSK
Network Key:	******** (hidden)

Beacon interval: 100ms
RTS threshold: 2346
Fragmentation: 2346
DTIM interval: 1
Preamble type: Short
CTS mode: Auto
Wireless mode: 802.11 Mixed (g/b)

 From 'lspci':

04:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network 
Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)