I'm running Linux Mint with the i3 window manager and the i3statu bar. I had been noticing the the W: (wifi) status line of i3status would sometimes report down for a few seconds even though sending continuous pings throughout the down/up interval would show no loss of connectivity.I found out that i3status uses iwconfig to get signal strength and ip to display in the status bar. During those times when W: is reported as down, this is iwconfig's output. (I am running iwconfig version 30.)wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:off/anyMode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=22 dBmRetry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:offAt all other times, iwconfig's output shows this:wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:Zoinks5Mode:Managed Frequency:5.765 GHz Access Point: 2C:30:33:43:73:64Bit Rate=6 Mb/s Tx-Power=22 dBmRetry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality=63/70 Signal level=-47 dBmRx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0As I mentioned, I don't seem experience actual loss of connectivity, but I am very curious why iwconfig seems to lose the association. Or is that that NetworkManager is reconnecting? Or is it something else entirely?Quick Edit to say that I don't seem to see this same behavior on my 2.4ghz network. Same AP. This only seems to happen on my 5ghz network. Also, the 5ghz signal strength is lower, but around 83% consistently which doesn't seem that bad.Edit: I'm in the US. My wireless router is a Netgear R6400. Connecting over 'n' spec. There is one wall between myself and the wireless router. Distance to router is less than 10 feet.
iwconfig shows lost association at regular intervals
debian;wifi;networkmanager
I am also using 5Ghz at work and home. At home my AP is very similar to yours, a model exactly equivalent of yours, but from TPLink (with OpenWRT).The thing is, 5Ghz does not lend itself to cross walls, and in overall the range is shorter than 2.4Ghz. At 22dB / 6Mbps it is notorious it is not already the best of the conditions.I even could not get 5Ghz going in the same room (my living room), at a distance similar to yours (2.5-3 meters), with 17dB, While I did not change the country code to PT to be able to increase the potency to 20dB. Per FCC rules, in the USA you have it capped to a lower potency (I do not live in the USA). Some people change the country code to HK, but you will be breaking regulations.With the increased potency, I maintain an SSID for 2.4GHz and another for 5GHz. When I am in the same room as the AP, I force the 5GHz SSID; when I am in the other room, which is a distance 3/4 bigger than yours (around 5-6 meters), I have to force the 2.4GHz, because otherwise, I will connected to the 5GHz, but the connection will be too unstable. The situation manifests itself both with my Macbook Pro, my iPhone 6 and my wifes iPhone 5s.You can try changing the country and increasing to the maximum potency, at least for testing. Otherwise, you will have to have another 5GHz router in that room, change the AP, get some external dongle with an antena gain to your equipment, or use 2.4GHz.I would guess you pinging the interface down is either because of a frontier value, or you are getting it in the middle of a negotiation (or several more probably).To have a better idea of what is happening search /var/log for logs; You might have them. wpa_supplicant also supports debug mode but unfortunately it is a compile time option. have a look at the AP logs too. Be aware that is it is indeed a lack of potency, the logs wont be much hopeful.