EAPOL-Key timeouts with Intel 2100B Client on XP

[Marcus Pollice]

Hi,

I have a rather weird problem with hostapd. After setting up everything 
I tested it with a couple of laptops. At first everything looked fine 
but one particular WinXP laptop with a Intel 2100B module had lots of 
connection problems. Basically the connection got reset every now and 
then. I investigated and raised the log level of hostapd and got a lot 
of these messages: "WPA: EAPOL-Key timeout"

I experimented with various settings including eapol_version=1 and 
eapol_key_index_workaround=1, but to no avail. What is really puzzling 
me is that it works very well (read: 1hour+ streaming, file transfers, 
etc.) with a rather recent Windows 7 laptop (with a n-mode adapter from 
Broadcom). I also tested with another Windows XP machine using a Intel 
3945ABG module and it worked fine as well, so there must be something 
weird going on on this one machine. Both WinXP machines are patched to 
SP3 with all recent updates.

My config:
interface=wlan0
bridge=br0
driver=nl80211
logger_syslog=-1
logger_syslog_level=0
logger_stdout=-1
logger_stdout_level=2
dump_file=/tmp/hostapd.dump
ctrl_interface=/var/run/hostapd
ctrl_interface_group=0
ssid=MySSID
hw_mode=b
channel=1
beacon_int=100
dtim_period=2
max_num_sta=255
rts_threshold=2347
fragm_threshold=2346
preamble=1
macaddr_acl=0
auth_algs=1
ignore_broadcast_ssid=0
wme_enabled=1
wme_ac_bk_cwmin=4
wme_ac_bk_cwmax=10
wme_ac_bk_aifs=7
wme_ac_bk_txop_limit=0
wme_ac_bk_acm=0
wme_ac_be_aifs=3
wme_ac_be_cwmin=4
wme_ac_be_cwmax=10
wme_ac_be_txop_limit=0
wme_ac_be_acm=0
wme_ac_vi_aifs=2
wme_ac_vi_cwmin=3
wme_ac_vi_cwmax=4
wme_ac_vi_txop_limit=94
wme_ac_vi_acm=0
wme_ac_vo_aifs=2
wme_ac_vo_cwmin=2
wme_ac_vo_cwmax=3
wme_ac_vo_txop_limit=47
wme_ac_vo_acm=0
eapol_version=2
eapol_key_index_workaround=0
eap_server=0
own_ip_addr=127.0.0.1
wpa=1
wpa_passphrase=XXXXXXXXXXXX
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_pairwise=TKIP

hostapd 0.7.3 is running on a Gentoo machine with a Broadcom BCM4318 
module, running kernel 2.6.36. I took the default hostapd config file 
and worked from there (the wme settings and some others were already 
there). If you need more information regarding employed software 
versions I'd happily provide it.

Any hints what I could do to get that old XP box to work with it would 
be appreciated as it was the reason I set up the thing in the first 
place in order to get rid of another old WLAN router I'm operating only 
for that laptop. If there is no solution I can continue to operate the 
old router, but maybe there is more to it so I'm asking here.

I hope this is no repost. I originally thought I can simply send a mail 
to the newsgroup without subscribing, but apparently this doesn't work 
so well (got a message it requires moderator approval which apparently 
never happened).

Regards

-- 
Marcus Pollice