Bug 23453

Summary:	Network centre/wpa_supplicant often connects to weakest AP of many possible for one SSID name rather than strongest one
Product:	Mageia	Reporter:	w unruh <unruh>
Component:	RPM Packages	Assignee:	Mageia tools maintainers <mageiatools>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:
Severity:	major
Priority:	Normal	CC:	marja11
Version:	Cauldron
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:	MGA8TOO
Source RPM:	drakx-net, wpa_supplicant	CVE:
Status comment:

Description w unruh 2018-08-16 16:35:54 CEST

Description of problem:
I am at a university and trying to connect to eduroam (this is also true of other ESSIDs ) there nstead of connecting to the strongest on, wpa_supplicant and Network Center (I suspect it is the former that is at fault) it will connect to one of the weaker links (eg 30% as I experienced just now. )

This is of course both silly and extremely annoying since a 30% connection is almost useless.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
MGA6 updated drakx-net-2.32.2-1.mga6
wpa_supplicant-2.6-1.1.mga6



How reproducible: too often for comfort. Not always. 


Steps to Reproduce:
1.Select entry in Network Center to connect to. Wait for connection.
2. If connection occurs ( by picking the weaker connections it often fails to connect entirely) it may well be one of the weaker connections. 
3.

Comment 1 w unruh 2018-08-17 10:47:31 CEST

It seems that wpa_supplicant just orders the BSSIDs in the order in whish they report when a scan is done, and tries them in that order without any attempt to find a "good one" It also does blacklisting for no apparent reason from the logs, and that can mean that a strong source can be blacklisted because of some highly temporary cause.

w unruh 2018-08-17 10:48:57 CEST

Summary: Network centre/wpa_supplicant often connects to weakest AP of may possible for one SSID rather than strongest one => Network centre/wpa_supplicant often connects to weakest AP of many possible for one SSID name rather than strongest one

Comment 2 Marja Van Waes 2018-08-17 19:09:58 CEST

I confirm the issue.

Source RPM: Network center and wpa_supplicant => drakx-net, wpa_supplicant
CC: (none) => marja11
Assignee: bugsquad => mageiatools

Comment 3 Marja Van Waes 2022-05-10 21:26:52 CEST

*** Bug 30363 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4 w unruh 2022-05-10 21:56:56 CEST

OK, this is only 4 years old by now. 
One could presumabley use wpa_cli bssid command to associate the ssid with the strongest bssid, rather than a random one. Of course this might well demand that the wpa_cli be suid root, since it only seems to work properly as root. Or we develope a wrapper script which cleans upthe envornment and then runs wpa_cli as root.

wlist is long depricated. wext is also depricated, and Mageia should not be using it as the wireless driver. nl80211 seems to work OK, although their penchant for naming wpa2 as RSN can be troublesome.
wpa_cli scan and wpa_cli scanresults give the information that is really needed to select the strongest bssid to get around wpa_supplicant's random selection. 

As I have said, my perl knowledge is non-existant, which means I am not one to go stirring around in the innards of draknet. 
(using nl80211 and wpa_cli might also alleviate the problem that if there are too many BSSIDs, all of Network Center stops working altogether. At something like 200 visible networks wlist stops giving any information entirely, which is NOT a useful default. But that is another bug.

Comment 5 sturmvogel 2023-06-30 20:04:32 CEST

*** Bug 32062 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

sturmvogel 2023-06-30 20:04:52 CEST

Whiteboard: (none) => MGA8TOO