problems with EN2511CD / NL2511CD

[dean gaudet]

On Tue, 3 Dec 2002, Jouni Malinen wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 10:59:24PM -0800, dean gaudet wrote:
>
> > Dec  2 22:46:51 mewlark kernel: wlan0: 00:40:96:5a:5d:ce auth (alg=0 trans#=1 stat=0 len=6 fc=00b0) ==> 0 (authOK)
> > Dec  2 22:46:51 mewlark kernel: wlan0: 00:40:96:5a:5d:ce auth_cb - frame was not ACKed
>
> OK, that's the problem.. The station is not acknowledging authentication
> frame from the AP (or at least the AP does not receive this ACK). Most
> common reason for this is the delay between authentication frames being
> too long. Some station firmware implementation seem to be quite strict
> on this. Do you happen to have lot of wireless traffic on the same
> channel? Is the AP host heavily loaded or is it writing kernel messages
> to frame buffer or serial console?

the problem happens with both a cisco 350 and a linksys WPC11 on the
client side.

there's no other wireless traffic on this channel (it's in my house and
none of my neighbours are using wireless) ... there could be other types
of 2.4GHz interference, but i've been testing with the client and AP
within 1m of each other.

no load on the AP host.

> The best method for researching the problem would be to use a third host
> as a wireless sniffer and record the frame exchange between the station
> and the AP. I would like to be sure that the authentication reply from
> the AP is really going out and that the station is not sending an ACK
> for it.

i can do this sniffing with my WPC11 (prism2) card, right?  i'll have to
build another linux laptop to do this... i'll give it a go though.  what
is the preferred tool for sniffing?

thanks
-dean