Wifi disconnects often (Intel 5100 on openSUSE 11.3)

English Network/Internet
1

I have a Intel Wifi Link 5100 and it connects fine, but disconnects very often(around once every 5~10mins) though i don’t have any such problems on Windows.

I tried to follow the sticky thread, but found no abnormalities:

**/sbin/lspci** ------ 

03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation WiFi Link 5100

**/sbin/lspci -n** ------ 

03:00.0 0280: 8086:4232

**dmesg | grep Wireless** ------ 

[8.255113] iwlagn: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link AGN driver for Linux, in-tree:d
[8.255326] iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 5100AGN REV=0x54
**
/usr/sbin/iwconfig** ------

IEEE 802.11abgn  ESSID:"STUDENT"  
Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:1A:E8:10:A5:28   
Bit Rate=2 Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   
Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off          
Link Quality=38/70  Si          gnal level=-72 dBm  
Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0          
**
sudo /usr/sbin/iwlist scan** ------

Cell 05 - Address: 00:1A:E8:10:A5:28
Channel:6
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality=30/70  Signal level=-80 dBm  
Encryption key:on
ESSID:"STUDENT"
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s
12 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s
Bit Rates:9 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Mode:Master
Extra:tsf=000000080cf80d9d
Extra: Last beacon: 13412ms ago
IE: Unknown: 000753545544454E54
IE: Unknown: 010882848B960C183048
IE: Unknown: 030106
IE: Unknown: 0706494E49010D24
IE: Unknown: 2A0104
IE: Unknown: 32041224606C
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (2) : TKIP CCMP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
Preauthentication Supported
IE: WPA Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (2) : CCMP TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
IE: Unknown: DD180050F2020101000003A4000027A4000042435E0062322F00
IE: Unknown: DD2D000CB4012801020006001AE810A5280030140003140000001AE810A52800000000000000000000000000000000
**
Kernel Driver** ------

iwlagn

Any thoughts?
Thanks in Advance.

2

On 02/26/2011 07:36 AM, xenon91 wrote:
>
> Any thoughts?
> Thanks in Advance.

You need to know the reason for the dropping. Is it deauthentication or
disassociation? It will be listed in the dmesg output. PLEASE DO NOT POST THE
ENTIRE OUTPUT. You need to do some selective reading. Hint: When the wireless
disconnects, it will be near the end.

Some possibilities: (1) Your DHCP lease renewal time is set very short, and it
is not getting renewed. (2) Your AP is incompatible. (3) There is a bug in the
driver. (4) ???

3

Using dmesg:

202.421593] wlan0: deauthenticated from 00:1a:e8:10:a5:2b (Reason: 1)
.
.
215.976159] wlan0: deauthenticated from 00:1a:e8:11:9e:6b (Reason: 1)
.
.
290.532216] wlan0: deauthenticating from 00:1a:e8:10:a5:28 by local choice (reason=3)

Hence Deauthentication right?

Some possibilities: (1) Your DHCP lease renewal time is set very short, and it
is not getting renewed. (2) Your AP is incompatible. (3) There is a bug in the
driver. (4) ???

Sorry, I’m quite a newbie; so what do i do in these cases?

4

On 02/26/2011 06:06 PM, xenon91 wrote:
>
> Using dmesg:
>
> 202.421593] wlan0: deauthenticated from 00:1a:e8:10:a5:2b (Reason:
> 1)

That is just great~ :wink:

Reason 1 means an “unspecified reason”.

Do you have a second Linux machine that can be set up with wireshark to capture
the wireless traffic so that the exact data on the air can be seen?

5

I’ll try to arrange for that; but how to re-install the driver? Maybe it could help?

6

On 02/28/2011 01:36 AM, xenon91 wrote:
>
> I’ll try to arrange for that; but how to re-install the driver? Maybe it
> could help?

The only way to reinstall the driver would be to get the compat-wireless
package. That will get you the latest version of that driver.

7

This looks like this problem:

Intel 5300 disconnect problems after upgrading 11.3

Or do you not use an N-router?

8

I have exactly the same problem with my 5100 and it affected me on Ubuntu 11.04 too.

I believe the problem lies with the Intel iwlwifi driver (iwlagn module in our case) and it only started affecting me when I upgraded from Ubuntu 10.10 to 11.04 - sadly I don’t know what kernel version 10.10 was using but this is important because iwlagn is now a standard kernel module.

Unfortunatly I think it will be a case of either ditching the Intel 5100 card for a card with the Atheros chipset or waiting for Intel to fix their driver (likely to be a while because looking at their website the response to these bug reports is slow.

If you look through /var/log/messages you may see that the firmware is restarted due to a low ack count. This isn’t the message every time I loose connection but is there quite often. I have found the only work around to be either -

The below will unload and then reload the driver. This worked fine on Ubuntu but for some reason does not restart correctly on OpenSUSE

rmmod iwlagn
modprobe iwlagn

The below works fine on OpenSUSE (you may need to change the name of your wireless adapter

ifdown wlan0

Now wait for network manager to restart the wireless adapter (takes a few seconds)

I’m a beginner with Linux so you may wish to take further advice on all of the above but the work arounds work for me. I am really hoping that someone sorts out the iwlagn driver out soon because it isn’t easy finding an alternative (non Intel) dual band chip at the moment.