better handle the wi-fi connection

My flukso regulary drops out from the Wireless router. I use around home few isp grade mikrotik routers with different Wifi cards, that are proven to work with every wifi client yu can imagine. Unfortunately flukso will sooner or later drop from the Wifi router. This happens usually after about 2 weeks. The only way is to reboot the flukso and it will register fine for another 2 weeks or more.

On the router I see that t tries to reconect but can't make it. Can you add some wifi deamon restart if that happens 10x in row? is here any more detailed log in the flusko regarding the wifi?

18:38:21 wireless,info A8:40:41:00:00:C8@wlan1: connected
18:38:26 wireless,info A8:40:41:00:00:C8@wlan1: disconnected, group key exchange timeout
18:38:56 wireless,info A8:40:41:00:00:C8@wlan1: connected
18:39:01 wireless,info A8:40:41:00:00:C8@wlan1: disconnected, group key exchange timeout
18:39:31 wireless,info A8:40:41:00:00:C8@wlan1: connected
18:39:36 wireless,info A8:40:41:00:00:C8@wlan1: disconnected, group key exchange timeout
18:40:06 wireless,info A8:40:41:00:00:C8@wlan1: connected
18:40:11 wireless,info A8:40:41:00:00:C8@wlan1: disconnected, group key exchange timeout

BTW, the signal level is about 37/70, what are those units? how ther relate to dB's?

Wozzzaaa's picture

Yeah the wireless is flaky for me too. Iam rewiring my house so I may change the network access from wireless to hardwired LAN.

claib's picture

hello there

got the same Problem around every 2 weeks....
.. and i'm always loosing data.

regards

icarus75's picture

@Sherlock, @Claib,

1/ Do you see any syslog entry when this error condition occurs? The syslog has a limited circular buffer. So you shouldn't wait too long after the error condition to check the syslog. It's available via the local web interface.

2/ 37/70 means 37dB above noise floor. So signal strength will not be an issue.

icarus75's picture

Have a look at this forum post [1]. Seems like using 'ISP grade' with Mikrotik routers is a slight exaggeration. Anyways, could you try WPA/TKIP iso WPA2/AES as encryption?

[1] http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=24123

UPDATE: Better still. Could you wait until the problem occurs, then ssh into the FLM via ethernet and launch this command and let me know if the FLM then re-associates successfully.

  1. root@flukso-9caf78:~$ killall -HUP wpa_supplicant

sherlock's picture

Consider it done, i'll get you all the logs and test it when the problem occurs

BTW,
Don't underestimate the power of Mikrotiks, In Eastern Europe they are driving force of the rural Internet. With tens of thousands of installations in Poland alone. This post is from 2008, that 2 generations of the software behind to the platform that is now at 5.14

I have deployed a municipal network of 110 public hotspots based on the mikrotik's that is used by 5k users so I have quite a good idea on what is the compatibility of Mikrotiks with all sorts of WiFi clients. It is better then anything else we tried.

icarus75's picture

Did you encounter any disconnects the past month? Just asking because I'd like to know whether the proposed fix actually works. If yes, then I can roll it into a new firmware release.

sherlock's picture

Ok, it took a wihile but my flukso just droped yesterday from the wifi I start troubleshooting.

Maciej

sherlock's picture

Ok , this is weird! This time the flukso died in a way that it did not take Ethernet connection as well.
Conecting Eth cable did not light up the led and there was no other option then to hard reset the device. After reset the Eth port started working again.

sherlock's picture

Checked the router and despite no connection on the Eth, it was still trying to login into WiFi but was failing with.

wireless,info A8:40:41:00:00:C8@wlan1: disconnected, group key exchange timeout

icarus75's picture

It's better not to reset the FLM so fast in the future. Leave it in the error condition and contact me. This way we can still investigate if there's a way to get in.

The wpa supplicant issue should not have any impact on the ethernet PHY behavior.

Thanks for reporting. I guess we'll just have to wait for the next occurrence.

Cheers,
-Bart.

sherlock's picture

Lazy saturday? My flukso dropped from wifi again. Want to investigate it?
I'll now try the killall -HUP wpa_supplicant fix first.

icarus75's picture

Yes, try the HUP'ing the daemon first and report back on the result. You could also do a logread and send me the dump via email. Should the HUP not work, then just leave it in the error condition. Don't reboot the FLM.

Cheers,
-Bart.

sherlock's picture

root@flukso-16ef13:~# killall -HUP wpa_supplicant

doest not fix the wifi :( sen you a logread over email but it does not contain anything meaningfull. (imho)

sherlock's picture

Ok so I think we nailed the problem, and that is a bug in the WPA2, with only WPA it does not have any problems with wifi connectivity.

icarus75's picture

Thanks for the info. I'll try to have a fix for this in the next firmware release.