FreeBSD 7.1 RELEASE looses wi-fi connection on Thinkpad R61i (Intel 3945ABG) or even crashes

[David Booth]

On Sunday 29 March 2009, Dmitry Smal wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have Thinkpad R61i (with Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG wi-fi
> adapter) running FreeBSD 7.1 RELEASE.
>
> Access point is ASUS WiFi-AP Solo (embeded in ASUS P5B-MX
> motherboard)
>
> Sometimes (2 - 3 time in hour) FreeBSD loses wifi connection to AP.
> In some cases connections appears again after 2-3 minutes,
> in some cases i need to /etc/rc.d/wpa_supplicant restart wpi0 to
> restart connection,
> in rare cases system crashes, leaving dump.
>
> I had similar problem running Ubuntu 8.10 on the same notebook
> (exept for crashes),
> and no problem running windows xp.
>


I had similar experience with the 3945 on my Dell.  It would loose 
connection in FreeBSD, but worked fine in windows.  After much 
experimenting, I found that it was related to the encryption 
settings.  If I switched from using wpa2 to WEP, everything was 
stable.  Then I got another clue when my Mother had the same problem 
with her McIntosh computer loosing connection with wpa2 and her 
router. When she got another router, her problems went away.  It 
turned out  that the issue was a problem between the implementation 
of wpa2 in the Netgear access point and FreeBSD.  When I got a new 
access point (a linksys) everything worked fine with wpa2 and I keep 
connecitons with no difficulties