On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 11:48:14PM +0000, James Cook wrote: > > Switching to channel 9 or 5GHz channel 153 seems to help: after a few > > minutes of use (mostly on 153) I haven't observed the problem again. > > > > However this raises another question. > > > > In fact my AP has a 2.4GHz network and a 5GHz network both called > > "OnOffStar" (the feature is called "band-steering" in the admin > > interface). OpenBSD ends up on the 2.4GHz network by default. Linux on > > the same laptop ends up on 5GHz. > > Right after sending this, I observed OpenBSD ending up on the 5GHz > network without me specyfing the SSID. So I guess it's not a sure > thing. > > Also, I did observe one more iwx0 error message, but at least it seems > less common than before.
Band steering is supposed to work, however it is very much a non-standard feature. Before some fixes for this went in, OpenBSD was unable to connect to band-steering Aruba APs. I've only tested these fixes against Aruba APs. I would not expect band steering, as implemented by Aruba, to work properly if the client does not do active scanning, which unfortunately is still the case with iwx (because of the aforementioned unresolved bug). I cannot tell whether this applies to your AP. I don't know how band-steering is implemented there. It will always involve some vendor-specific heuristics on the AP side. I don't understand why you are seeing traffic stalls. For now, I am out of ideas. I guess you could try forcing the iwx client to a 5GHz channel, either via a channel number or via your 5GHz AP's BSSID, if that helps.
