[Wirelessdriver-support] can't transmit 85% of the time..

[Andrew G. <gal...@cs...>]

Hi,

As the subject says, I'm unable to transmit most of the time.

I'm running 10.2.1 on a Powerbook G4 867MHz.  My access point
is a Lucent RG1000 with WEP enabled.  I'm using a Snapgear appliance
as my dhcp server, etc.

I've tried both a genuine Lucent Wavelan Orinoco (fw 1-6.6) card, as
well as a Cabletron Roamabout card (fw 1-6.4).  Both cards work fine
and dandy with FreeBSD 4.x on a Dell Lattitude, both fail exactly the
same way under OS-X.  The Orinoco card seems to spam more
"org_noncontiguous_WirelessDriver: wi_get_cur_ssid no record
available.  Default is: , len: 0" messages at startup, but otherwise
behaviour is identical.

After I enter the network name and the wep key in the control panel, I
(most of the time) do not get an address via dhcp.  Running tcpdump in
an xterm, I can see bootp requests going out when lookup is restarted.
No reply comes in and en1 (where the Cabletron lands) gets the bizzare
Apple default 169.mumble.foo.bar address.  The dhcp server is working
fine, as if I pop out the Orinoco card on the Dell, and re-insert it,
it will get an address.

I strongly suspect that I do have the encryption right because I see
other traffic on the network (like my wife's ssh session on the above
mentioned Dell).  And the card stops blinking, and I see one light lit
all the time, and the other light lit when traffic comes in. (just
like on FreeBSD, and when it works on the Apple) So it seems that the
Apple can see all the traffic, but cannot seem to talk.

Also, I cannot talk even if I manually configure the address my dhcp
server would give me.  Nobody even sees my arp requests.  

The only think I've found which works is to reboot the machine and
cross my fingers.  About 1 time in 7, things just work.

If this is not a common problem caused by pilot error on my part, then
my #1 suspicion is that there is a race condition somewhere which gets
worse with a faster CPU.  (ie, this box is brand new, and probably
faster than the box the driver was developed on). Perhaps a missing
IODelay() that was never noticed on older machines?

Thanks for any help you can give me!

Drew


The following is from a WORKING boot.  The only difference that I've
seen between a working and non-working boot is the ip address assigned
to en1.

### system info

ProductName:	Mac OS X
ProductVersion:	10.2.1
BuildVersion:	6E62
Darwin tibook.local. 6.1 Darwin Kernel Version 6.1: Fri Sep  6 23:09:31 PDT 2002; root:xnu/xnu-344.2.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC  Power Macintosh powerpc
ppc7450

### wireless driver files installed

drwxr-xr-x    3 root     wheel         102 Nov 29 14:21 WirelessDriver.kext
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     wheel         102 Oct  2 14:52 IOPCCardFamily.kext

### wirelesscard info

    | |         |   "VersionOneInfo" = ("Cabletron","RoamAbout 802.11 DS","Vers$
    | |           |   "VersionOneInfo" = ("Cabletron","RoamAbout 802.11 DS")
    | |       +-o pccard156,2@0,0  <class IOPCCard16Device>
    | |         |   "IOName" = "pccard156,2"

### network info

lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384
	inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000 
gif0: flags=8010<POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST> mtu 1280
stf0: flags=0<> mtu 1280
en0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
	inet6 fe80::203:93ff:fedb:1954%en0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x4 
	ether 00:03:93:db:19:54 
	media: autoselect (none) status: inactive
	supported media: none autoselect 10baseT/UTP <half-duplex> 10baseT/UTP <half-duplex,hw-loopback> 10baseT/UTP <full-duplex> 10baseT/UTP <full-duplex,hw-loopback> 100baseTX <half-duplex> 100baseTX <half-duplex,hw-loopback> 100baseTX <full-duplex> 100baseTX <full-duplex,hw-loopback> 1000baseTX <full-duplex> 1000baseTX <full-duplex,hw-loopback> 1000baseTX <full-duplex,flow-control> 1000baseTX <full-duplex,flow-control,hw-loopback>
en1: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
	inet6 fe80::2e0:63ff:fe81:c8be%en1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x5 
	inet 172.31.193.100 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.31.193.255
	ether 00:e0:63:81:c8:be 
	media: <unknown type> (DS11 <full-duplex>) status: active
	supported media: none manual autoselect DS1 <half-duplex> DS1 <full-duplex> DS2 <half-duplex> DS2 <full-duplex> DS5 <half-duplex> DS5 <full-duplex> DS11 <half-duplex> DS11 <full-duplex>

### wd command line tool status

Network Name: 23xxxx, successful: Y
Status:
Network: 23xxxx
WEP Enabled:NO
Signal Strength:96


Note that I obscured the last 4 digits of the Network name, as I've
left the WEP key as the default (the last 5 digits).  Also note that
WEP is enabled, regardless of what this utility thinks.