strange behavior w/ 16 wds links but not 15

[Brock Eastman]

We have been having issues w/ hostap 0.0.4 when we have 16 wds links off of
it.  It will in fact crash the system every time
even with the prism2_param wlan0 max_wds ## set to 16 or higher.

We have a true 16 wds links running in our test environment.  We believe the
problem is somewhere with the bridge code or the 2.4.20 kernel. We
are using debian. We have searched the bridge code for a pseudo device and
have come up with no results.  The bridge actually is what crashes
when it goes into a forwarding state.

Has anyone been able to run any more links than this? We are using a Zycomax
card prism2.5 w/ hostap 1.7.4 firmware.

Brock Eastman
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jouni Malinen" <jkmaline at cc.hut.fi>
To: <hostap at shmoo.com>
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2003 6:34 PM
Subject: Re: Need advice: whether to flash DLink DWL-520


> On Mon, Aug 11, 2003 at 11:15:12AM -0400, James B. Hiller wrote:
>
> > The DWL-520 in Machine A performing the host function has:
> >
> > NIC ID=x8013 v1.0.0
> > PRI ID=x15 v1.0.5
> > STA ID=x1f v1.3.4
>
> > a.  Is there a good reason to upgrade the firmware on this card
> > serving as the host AP/router?  If so, to which versions, using
> > which tool, available where (firmware and tool)?  Should I do only
> > the volatile, and if so, would I need to do the non-volatile to get
> > to a version which supports non-volatile?
>
> Yes, you should consider upgrading the firmware. That combination of
> PRI/STA firmware is known to have a bug that causes corruption of data
> on PCI bus. This was fixed in PRI 1.0.7 / STA 1.3.5, so it or anything
> newer is probably better solution.
>
> I would recommend first testing with volatile upgrade to make sure that
> the new firmware version actually works with your card and there are no
> unpleasant surprises waiting to happen. At least some people have
> reported dropped signal strength/quality with new firmware versions. It
> is possible that the PDA on the card does not include all new
> configuration values and the defaults in the firmware image are not
> optimal for that card, etc.
>
> If you are going to download firmware images with Host AP driver, please
> use the latest CVS snapshot of it.
>
>
> > c.  Should I be compiling the Prism 2.5 kernel driver into the kernel
> > on the host ap machine as I've been doing, should I not be, or does
> > it not matter?
>
> What do you mean with "Prism 2.5 kernel driver"? orinoco_pci?
> hostap_pci? If you plan to use two different drivers for the same PCI
> card, I would not link them into the kernel image.. If it is only one
> driver, then it should be OK to link it in.
>
> --
> Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA
> _______________________________________________
> HostAP mailing list
> HostAP at shmoo.com
> http://lists.shmoo.com/mailman/listinfo/hostap
>