iwl if you will#

Tue, 01 Oct 2013 09:40:40 +0000

I don't pretend to understand much about wifi, but - historically, at least - I observe that the phrase "wireless net working" is often, like "military intelligence" or "road works ahead", most charitably described as oxymoronic.

The ingredients:

• a linux box with an "Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N 6230" network controller

• the iwlwifi module

• a dual-frequency (2.4GHz and 5GHz) smallish "Enterprise" network based on Ciso Meraki

The symptoms: sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes it works for a couple of minutes and then stops.

The hypothesis: iwlwifi or the hardware it's talking to doesn't like talking on 5GHz channels

The fix (first attempt):

:; cat /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf 
options iwlwifi 5ghz_disable=1

The problem with this fix: it makes no difference. It turns out 5ghz_disable has no effect any longer

The fix (second attempt): add the line

	freq_list=2412 2417 2422 2427 2432 2437 2442 2447 2452 2457 2462 2467 2472 2477 2482

to the relevant network clause in /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf. And be grateful you're not using dbus

The result: it seems to be working so far.

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