Comment 24 for bug 356807

In my situation, iwevent does not indicate disconnects/reconnects, but I get this same huge volume of messages in dmesg.
[449203.816051] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 9(9) BSS returned, data->length = 1338
[449323.820103] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 15(15) BSS returned, data->length = 2484
[449443.814379] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 15(15) BSS returned, data->length = 2316
[449563.818063] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 12(12) BSS returned, data->length = 1724
[449683.814254] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 17(17) BSS returned, data->length = 2459
[449803.809710] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 17(17) BSS returned, data->length = 2811
[449923.814747] ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 19(19) BSS returned, data->length = 3006

Every 20 seconds exactly (I timed it), the laptop's network connection "pauses" for just a moment, then resumes. This especially affects applications that don't do enough buffering. In my case, I noticed the problem because pulseaudio does not do sufficient buffering to compensate for this pause every 20 seconds, and I get skipping.

Another laptop with an Intel wireless card does not show this 20 second problem, and I tested with both in the same location. Notably, the router is just about 6 feet away from the laptop.

Here's the iwconfig output:
$ iwconfig ra0
ra0 RT2860 Wireless ESSID:"apt" Nickname:"RT2860STA"
          Mode:Managed Frequency=2.417 GHz Access Point: 00:1D:60:54:24:D0
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s
          RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
          Link Quality=100/100 Signal level:-41 dBm Noise level:-71 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

You can't get better than 100/100 link quality, and these problem still occur.

$ uname -a
Linux nantucket 2.6.31-19-generic #56-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jan 28 02:39:34 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Further info available upon request.