Netgear MA401 in AP mode and Sony Clie connection hangs

[Greg Mohney]

Hello,

I am attempting to use my Netgear MA401 16-bit PCMCIA card in my laptop
as an AP using hostap. The only device that I wish to communicate with
it is my new Sony Clie PEG-NX60 handheld with the (you guessed it) Sony
PEGA-WL100 wireless Compact Flash card.  Both are fairly new devices,
and I dont have any information as to what sort of hardware the Sony
wireless card is.  For those still reading, below is my configuration
and problem.

RedHat 8.0 (recent wireless-tools, etc)
kernel 2.4.20 + some patches
CVS hostap as of 1/1/03
hostapd
Latest PRISM firmware AFAIK:
Mar  2 00:22:58 pawn kernel: wlan0: NIC: id=0x800c v1.0.0
Mar  2 00:22:58 pawn kernel: wlan0: PRI: id=0x15 v1.1.1
Mar  2 00:22:58 pawn kernel: wlan0: STA: id=0x1f v1.5.6
(Firmware was patched up from 1.3.6 while trying to fix this problem,
with little if any improvement)

The problem is that, anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 minutes after
"connection" from my handheld to the Netgear PCMCIA card in AP mode, the
link dies.  During test sessions I keep a ping open from the laptop to
the handheld, and it is immediately obvious when the connection dies as
the pings just start dropping.  The connection never recovers, and an
immediate re-connection attempt will not succeed (even reloading
modules, ejecting and re-inserting the PCMCIA card, re-initializing the
connection from the handheld, nothing will work.)

Unfortunately the Clie has no network probing abilities, no status
indicator, and no log file to look at.  You hit connect, once it makes
the card go it considers itself connected, and the only way to affirm a
connection is to try and hit a web page, or connect to IRC (I guess i
should find ping for PalmOS...)

At any rate...interestingly, I can usually get the connection to go
again after a period of approximately 30-40 minutes.  No re-loading
modules or anything, just say "Make Connection" on the handheld and
things resume for a short time.  Then the connection dies.

Below is a log of a connection that lasted about 20 seconds.

Received 30 bytes management frame
MGMT
mgmt::auth
authentication: STA=00:02:b3:c4:19:78 auth_alg=0 auth_transaction=1
status_code=0
  New STA
Station 00:02:b3:c4:19:78 authentication OK (open system)
Received 30 bytes management frame
MGMT (TX callback) ACK
mgmt::auth cb
Station 00:02:b3:c4:19:78 authenticated
Received 42 bytes management frame
MGMT
mgmt::assoc_req
association request: STA=00:02:b3:c4:19:78 capab_info=0x01
listen_interval=15
  new AID 1
Station 00:02:b3:c4:19:78 association OK (aid 1)
Received 36 bytes management frame
MGMT (TX callback) ACK
mgmt::assoc_resp cb
Station 00:02:b3:c4:19:78 associated (aid 1)
Received 42 bytes management frame
DATA
Unknown ethertype 0x8781 in data frame
Received 30 bytes management frame
MGMT
mgmt::auth
authentication: STA=00:02:b3:c4:19:78 auth_alg=0 auth_transaction=1
status_code=0
Station 00:02:b3:c4:19:78 authentication OK (open system)
Received 30 bytes management frame
MGMT (TX callback) ACK
mgmt::auth cb
Station 00:02:b3:c4:19:78 authenticated
Received 42 bytes management frame
MGMT
mgmt::assoc_req
association request: STA=00:02:b3:c4:19:78 capab_info=0x01
listen_interval=15
  old AID 1
Station 00:02:b3:c4:19:78 association OK (aid 1)
Received 36 bytes management frame
MGMT (TX callback) ACK
mgmt::assoc_resp cb
Station 00:02:b3:c4:19:78 associated (aid 1)

Im fairly certain that the connection "broke" around the "Uknown
ethertype 0x8781 in data frame" line, but I'm not positive (could have
been last message before it broke or first afterward).  Also not sure
what the second assoc_req is about, as the handheld was in an app
stalling at the time.

Also in syslog around the time of the lockup:

Mar  2 00:26:13 pawn kernel: wlan0: STA 00:02:b3:c4:19:78 TX rate
lowered to 55
Mar  2 00:26:14 pawn kernel: wlan0: STA 00:02:b3:c4:19:78 TX rate
lowered to 20
Mar  2 00:26:16 pawn kernel: wlan0: STA 00:02:b3:c4:19:78 TX rate
lowered to 10
Mar  2 00:26:28 pawn kernel: wlan0: STA 00:02:b3:c4:19:78 TX rate
lowered to 55
Mar  2 00:26:29 pawn kernel: wlan0: STA 00:02:b3:c4:19:78 TX rate
lowered to 20
Mar  2 00:26:29 pawn kernel: wlan0: STA 00:02:b3:c4:19:78 TX rate
lowered to 10

To anyone who has read this far I appreciate it, I realize it's new and
unknown hardware on one end...I guess I'm mainly hoping that someone
clueful unlike myself will see this and get interested, with a secondary
goal of hopefully finding a fix, as this is ruining my beautiful
home-office-wireless-land dream :-)

Thanks to all replies and will follow up...feel free to email me
privately.

Greg