Wireless bridge failing with a particular client

[Pep Turró]

Hi,

I have a FreeBSD wireless Access Point configured as per the Handbook.
It has been working perfectly for months.

But things fail when I try to connect through it with a brand new
Nokia 9500 (nice gift!), and I have no clue why.

What I can see is a lot of packet loss. DHCP (provided by a router in
the network) is not working, most likely because packets get lost (I
saw an offer in one of the packet traces, but the nokia did not get
the address). If I configure a static IP address and try to ping the
nokia from the wired network:

pep at bogota:~$ ping 10.10.10.73
PING 10.10.10.73 (10.10.10.73) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.10.10.73: icmp_seq=8 ttl=69 time=18.1 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.73: icmp_seq=12 ttl=69 time=6.48 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.73: icmp_seq=25 ttl=69 time=14.1 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.73: icmp_seq=29 ttl=69 time=5.38 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.73: icmp_seq=42 ttl=69 time=14.6 ms

--- 10.10.10.73 ping statistics ---
50 packets transmitted, 5 received, 90% packet loss, time 48996ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 5.389/11.754/18.126/4.960 ms

At the very same time I am connecting with a laptop through this ap
and works perfectly:
pep at bogota:~$ ping 10.10.10.130
PING 10.10.10.130 (10.10.10.130) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.10.10.130: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=3.06 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.130: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=2.93 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.130: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=2.53 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.130: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=2.60 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.130: icmp_seq=5 ttl=255 time=2.61 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.130: icmp_seq=6 ttl=255 time=2.42 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.130: icmp_seq=7 ttl=255 time=2.80 ms

--- 10.10.10.130 ping statistics ---
7 packets transmitted, 7 received, 0% packet loss, time 6004ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 2.424/2.711/3.065/0.223 ms

And I can see both from the AP:
pep at david:~$ wicontrol -l
2 stations:
00:0e:ed:bf:28:1c  asid=0210, flags=3<ASSOC,AUTH>, caps=1<ESS>,
rates=f<1M,2M,5.5M,11M>, sig=51/10
00:80:c8:2c:09:79  asid=03d0, flags=3<ASSOC,AUTH>, caps=1<ESS>,
rates=f<1M,2M,5.5M,11M>, sig=47/10

(the first is the nokia, the second is the laptop with a smc wireless card)

The config options on the Nokia are fairly simple, leaving not much
room for debug/improvement... but I think they are ok. I got its
wireless connection to work in ad-hoc mode with a laptop.

The wireless net is not using wep for these tests.

Thanks,

pep