Hi, Dan Williams, NM developer, wrote this on this topic on the mailing list:
The core of the problem is that this is may be a driver issue. There's no reason why re-association should take more than a 5 - 10 seconds at most. Papering over the issue in NetworkManager without investigating why the driver is dropping association for more than 8 seconds is just the wrong answer. Without a lot more investigation into why the drivers are having problems, and why only _certain_ drivers are having problems, the patch is incorrect. Patches that are not investigated are not going to get applied just like that. I'd like to see driver traces from madwifi and ipw2200 that indicate why the association was dropped, and what the card is doing to achieve re-association during those 10 - 20 seconds. Remember, during the 10 - 20 seconds, the driver should _not_ be able to pass traffic if it's really disassociated from the AP. If the driver is actually associated to the AP, then it needs to report that correctly via WEXT, which is the noticed by wpa_supplicant, which is then noticed by NetworkManager. So we need to verify that the driver is doing the right thing first, before crying wolf and patching NetworkManager for something that in reality may not actually be required. A clear picture of the issue is required. Remember, when you encounter errant behavior, there's a lot more in the stack than just NetworkManager, and that includes both wpa_supplicant and the drivers. Historically, drivers have been quite inconsistent and buggy. That's not to say that NM is bug-free at all, just that many behavioral problems like this can be traced back to drivers behaving badly. ---- end here ---- So it's not NM's fault to use all features of the wireless stack (software + hardware) and relying on correct behaviour. Manual configurations and wpa_supplicant don't show some of the encountered problems, as they make different assumptions and use different functions. Please bug: a) hardware vendors for broken hardware b) driver developers for each "cooking their own soup" and not using common standards As for the wireless driver developers, I hope the new 80211 stack will be the last (and best) change in infrastructure and they migrate ASAP. Nikolaus -- Wireless network keeps reconnecting (ubuntu edgy) https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/64173 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is the bug contact for Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
