MBP Airport fails to reconnect to WPA network after sleeping

[Eiríkr]

Hello all --

I've poked around a good bit both on the fora here and elsewhere, and I haven't found anything definitive yet. Here's the setup:

• A PPC iBook and Intel MacBook Pro, both running updated Tiger
• A D-Link WBR-2310 (apparently a repackaged DI-624 rev D) wireless router using WPA encryption

Steps to reproduce symptoms:

• Connect to router wirelessly from Mac laptop
• Enter passkey, add to keychain
• Put Mac to sleep
• Wake Mac up
• Connection doesn't work

I can connect initially just fine. The trouble is that, when waking the machines up after they sleep, they seem to think they're connected, but they're not. Signal strength is just fine. This does *not* happen when I set the router to use now-obsolete WEP security instead, which pretty clearly indicates some sort of WPA problem. Connecting to the WPA-encrypted WBR-2310 router with a separate WRT54GL router that I just got works just fine, but then again the WRT54GL doesn't sleep (at least not yet, I think I saw a sleep option somewhere in the Tomato config screens), so I'm not sure if that would have the same reconnection issue. I don't have any other non-Mac laptops for testing, either.

Reading elsewhere, the hit-or-miss nature of this bug seems to suggest a possible hardware bug, where maybe Apple got a bum shipment of Airport cards.

Anyone have any ideas? I've also posted over on the Ubuntu Forums in a related thread.

Cheers,

-- Eiríkr