Re: [opensuse] intermittent wireless connection drops

On Mon, 27 Feb 2012 21:25:09 -0500
Doug <dmcgarrett@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 02/27/2012 06:35 PM, Fr David Ousley wrote:
We're having trouble with dropped wireless connections from a
laptop. It connects when laptop is booted, and then stays on for an
hour or three or six hours, and then is lost. Then in manually
reconnecting, one of two things shows up. Sometimes, Network
Manager shows "activating", which is usually that it has connected
to the router but has not been able to get a network address. This
can usually be fixed by going into the Network Manager, and
reentering the password (or one character of it). Other times, if
one "scans" in network manager, no networks appear. In this case,
"rcnetwork restart" will usually restore the connection. So the
problem is not that we cannot connect, but that once we connect it
is not reliable, and gets dropped at unpredictable intervals,
usually but not always once or twice a day.

I'm using knetworkmanager in kde (rather than ifup), but the same
behavior has occurred in gnome. If I recall, it has also happened
with ifup. Opensuse 11.4, kde 4.6.

Any suggestions as to how to troubleshoot this? Thanks.

This could be an interference problem. First, if your laptop has a
signal strength indicator, watch it and see if the normal
complement of signals is being received. Also, look and see *what* is
being received--do you see the usual group of
neighbors, or are they being swamped out by something.

Borrow another laptop that has wireless, and see if you see a similar
problem on it.

Tracking down an interfering signal is beyond the scope of the
average computer user, but if you determine that it's likely
to be something like that, perhaps a call to the local Amateur Radio
Club might find a ham or two who could and would help
you find the interferer.

--doug

I would add that a poorly matched / buggy, or wrongly configured
module / driver could be failing to scale Tx/Rx power, causing hardware
protection circuitry to intervene when the wireless nic starts
overheating. I actually saw this in my laptop early on with the
iwalign(sic?) module.

Carl
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