Decreased Wifi performance / stability when using wpa2

[n8mahr@…]

I am using a AVM Fritz!wlan USB N to connect to the Fonera 2.0n. When using WPA with tkip or AES, the connection is absolutely stable.

As soon as I switch to WPA2 AES, the connection becomes unstable, and the fonera gets slower and slower. My instant messenger loses its connection to its server, some pages are loading endlessly.

The stick worked fine with another router in wpa2 aes mode at a friends house, so I know it´s a thing between fonera 2.0n and the stick. Something personal? Perhaps..

[matthijs]

We'll have to look at this more closely, I don't have an obvious fix or debugging suggestions right now. I'll try to see if my 2.0n shows the same behaviour, but it might take a while before I get around to this.

[matthijs]

I did a bit of experimenting, seems like the bad connection is happening for me as well for WPA2/AES. I'm seeing bad responsiveness over SSH, high ping times every regularly (but not all the time) and the connection stops working completely after a while.

Everything works okay for WPA2/TKIP, though. I just realized I haven't tested WPA/AES yet, I'll do that later on.

Does this match your observations?

[n8mahr@…]

Replying to matthijs: Yes, this is almost the same trouble I have with the connection. I am happy you dug into this! I did some ping-tests on the connection´s stability... this is what I found:

1) All tests while running the fonera in "normal" b/g/n mode -

With WPA / TKIP, ping to a webpage (www.heise.de) is approx. 14ms. Surfing the net does NOT have any impact on ping times, the connection is absolutely stable.

With WPA / AES, my stick could not connect, because it read the network as WEP-encrypted!! (My old Iphone 2g could connect!)

With WPA2/ TKIP no connection with the fritz!stick possible, with no reason given, Iphone 2g could connect.

With WPA2/ AES connection was possible, ping times almost normal (15ms, with some heavy slowdowns up to 200+ms every few seconds). But as soon as I try to load any webpage, the connection breaks down completely, 2 "pings" are lost, then the connection is reestablished, but pageloading is very slow.

With MixedMode? WPA2/WPA and AES/TKIP, the connection is possible, but not stable either. And slow as in WPA2 AES only mode (seems my stick chooses wpa2 aes automatically).

When I DEACTIVATE N, and run the fonera only in g-mode, connecting with WPA2 AES is possible without slowdowns or packet losses.

The N-mode has to play a role in this, because my IPhone is not capable of N-mode, and could connect all the time.. Some of my hardware can obviously not handle heavy encryption and high speed connection well, wheter the fonera or the Fritz!Stick

I also wrote to AVM, the company behind the Fritz!Stick and await their reply, if this problem could be related to their drivers..

I hope you keep me updated, too, so we can rule out what is my error, what is AVMs fault and for what the fonera is to blame.

If you need any further details, let me know. I am not a programmer, but I hope I can be of assistance, though.

[matthijs]

Could you test if this problem still exists in the 2.3.7.0 rc2 firmware version? The wifi drivers have been updated, which might fix this problem.