android phone often needs reboot to authenticate with 802.11ac AP

[Jouni Malinen]

On Mon, Aug 26, 2024 at 07:30:48AM -0400, Bruno Dantas wrote:
> I edited these phones' wpa_supplicant settings (at /data/vendor/wifi/wpa/wpa_supplicant), changing `fast_reauth=1` to `fast_reauth=0`, then rebooting the phones. I have not had another failed authentication yet after limited testing (walking away from house until wifi is out of range, then walking back to see if reauthentication is successful).
> 
> If this wpa_supplicant tweak turns out to be the solution, I'm puzzled as to why `fast_reath=1` never caused problems when my AP was using the 802.11n hostapd.conf.

fast_reauth configures EAP behavior and your AP configuration indicated
that EAP is not used at all. In other words, that change in
wpa_supplicant configuration should have no impact whatsoever to the
observed behavior and whatever change you may have seen is likely a
coincidence..

Figuring out the real issue for this would likely require debugging the
WLAN driver on the Android phone if restarting wpa_supplicant alone is
not sufficient to work around issues and the phone needs to be fully
rebooted.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA