Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 241734
Network Manager causes periodic 802.11 network freezes
Last modified: 2008-04-04 04:31:38 EDT
Description of problem: When network manager is running the 802.11 network repeatedly freezes for several second every few minutes. If you run a ping, all the packets eventually get through but the packets transmitted during the freeze all get delivered in a burst after several seconds. The problem goes away if you shut down NetworkManager and configure the interface through a ifcfg-wlan0 file. The 802.11 device is an Intel iwl3945 connecting to a LinkSys WRT54GL running OpenWRT with 128 bit WEP. Kernel version 2.6.21-1.3194.fc7 Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): NetworkManager-0.6.5-2.fc7 How reproducible: Easilly Steps to Reproduce: 1. Start up NetworkManager and NetworkManagerDispatcher 2. Log in to Gnome 3. Allow NetworkManager to associate with an access point 4. Start a ping going across the 802.11 network 5. Wait for a few minutes. Actual results: Note the timestamps on the below ping: 64 bytes from 84.92.27.250: icmp_seq=135 ttl=64 time=1.41 ms 64 bytes from 84.92.27.250: icmp_seq=136 ttl=64 time=1.34 ms 64 bytes from 84.92.27.250: icmp_seq=137 ttl=64 time=5715 ms 64 bytes from 84.92.27.250: icmp_seq=138 ttl=64 time=4718 ms 64 bytes from 84.92.27.250: icmp_seq=139 ttl=64 time=3719 ms 64 bytes from 84.92.27.250: icmp_seq=140 ttl=64 time=2720 ms 64 bytes from 84.92.27.250: icmp_seq=141 ttl=64 time=1721 ms 64 bytes from 84.92.27.250: icmp_seq=142 ttl=64 time=726 ms 64 bytes from 84.92.27.250: icmp_seq=143 ttl=64 time=1.49 ms 64 bytes from 84.92.27.250: icmp_seq=144 ttl=64 time=1.34 ms Expected results: The presence of NetworkManager should not affect the network's performance Additional info: I am unsure if this is a problem with NetworkManager or the driver. I presume that Network manager asks the NIC to scan for other access points periodically - should the NIC be expected to do this without disrupting the network connection?
Each time the network freezes up it lasts for 7 seconds and results in the kernel logging: iwl3945: REPLY_ADD_STA failed So it appears to be a problem with the iwl3945 driver which is being triggered by something that NetworkManager is doing. I've opened an upstream bug against the iwlwifi driver: http://bughost.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1338
Based on the date this bug was created, it appears to have been reported against rawhide during the development of a Fedora release that is no longer maintained. In order to refocus our efforts as a project we are flagging all of the open bugs for releases which are no longer maintained. If this bug remains in NEEDINFO thirty (30) days from now, we will automatically close it. If you can reproduce this bug in a maintained Fedora version (7, 8, or rawhide), please change this bug to the respective version and change the status to ASSIGNED. (If you're unable to change the bug's version or status, add a comment to the bug and someone will change it for you.) Thanks for your help, and we apologize again that we haven't handled these issues to this point. The process we're following is outlined here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/F9CleanUp We will be following the process here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping to ensure this doesn't happen again.
Seems ok with the very latest Fedora 8 kernel. Although the iwl3945 driver seems to be one of those things that regularly breaks on updates so I wouldn't be surprised it this reoccurs. NOTE: This bug was filed under Fedora 7, *NOT* Rawhide.