Don't use WPA(2) with Atheros compression in 2.9.18!

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

We have had several occurrences of this phenomenon:

2.9.18, only basic wireless configuration with WPA or WPA2 between the routers. Compression (Atheros wireless interfaces) was turned ON.

Those links were not able to come up or stay up for more than a few minutes. Typical error log messages would be

lost connection, decided to deauth: 4-way handshake timeout (15)

Turning OFF compression on the devices (as suggested by MikroTik support) did clear all problems - the links are running fine (again).

So: Stay away from using the compression feature in 2.9.18 with encryption on the link! This happened on RB500, WRAP and PC-based systems…

Best regards,
Christian Meis

2

Thanks for the heads up!

3

we have faced the same problem on a 2.9.8 OS while the n-streme was enabled…kind of deauth. message appeared at the log screen and the wds link couldnt stay up for one one sec…disabling either encryption or n-streme would solve the problem.

4

there is no problems with nstreme and encryption enabled.

5

same problem still with 2.9.19

i used 2.9.19 with WPA2

after i turned on compression, no go anymore…

tested it without wpa encryption and it does work..
but together forget it…

6

we will update the documentation with this issue.

7

cmit told me, that this feature will be removed, or fixed.

So does it mean, that it is still possible to “click” it in 2.9.20 that it is fixed?[/img]

8

it’s still there in 2.9.20
you can still select the compression and use wpa2 together…

but still it doesn’t work…
so the interface did change… nor did the bug…

it will be for a other release

they work fine by, but just not together

9

It is not so easy to fix. Maybe the fix will be in v2.10.
For now you can use only one of the feature at the same time. Enable nstreme instead of compression if you want better throughput.

10

we could do that…
but only if we had a only MT network…
now if you enable nstreme… no other AP or laptops can connect…
with compression the AP negotiates to see if the other end supports compression, if not it will do it uncompressed…

so nstreme is only a option if you would put some negotiating of nstreme in MT
but it’s not there , so …