[Madwifi-users] wireless tools dont see ap with low beacon interval with madwifi

[Matthias K. <m...@ka...>]

hi!

just wanted to inform about a problem that took me several hours to
solve. i'm not sure if its a bug, so i didnt open a ticket yet.

i got an access point with a very short beacon interval (20ms),
because it solved some connection problems earlier (we got several
clients in some distance, with thick walls inbetween). we have 3
wireless clients (windows and linux, non of them with madwifi driver)
which all can connect to it without any problems.

however, my new acer aspire one netbook with atheros chipset and
madwifi drivers cant connect. it DOESNT EVEN SEE the ap (ie the ap
isnt in "iwlist ath0 scan", ap with SSID BC on, same room, without
encryption).

i managed to solve this problem by increasing the beacon interval to
30ms. i also was able to reproduce the problem: 20ms beacon time =
iwlist doesnt see the ap; 30ms -> iwlist shows the ap correctly and i
can connect.

so: madwifi drives (at least in combination with the acer aspire one
wifi card) dont see ap with low beacon interval.

another weird detail: airodump-ng sees the ap in monitor mode, even
with low beacon interval!

hope that will help someone who has the same problem without spending
hours to figure out why he cant see his ap :-)

regards,

Matthias