[gentoo-user] wireless dropping connections

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

I'm using wicd-1.7.2.4-r1 and a NetGear DGN2200M v2 wireless AP
(802.11n)

Several times a day, this thing just drops wireless. I doubt it's my
laptop as other devices in the house also get affected. When this
happens I usually manually reconnect using wicd, it can do this
automatically but there's a long timeout first before it realizes the
connection was dropped.

The router logs have very little in them, all I see is my laptop asking
for and getting a new IP. Laptop logs show this:

Oct 30 13:10:45 khamul dhcpcd[24141]: wlan0: carrier lost
Oct 30 13:10:45 khamul kernel: [229075.169304] cfg80211: Calling CRDA
to update world regulatory domain Oct 30 13:10:45 khamul kernel:
[229075.214909] cfg80211: World regulatory domain updated: Oct 30
13:10:45 khamul kernel: [229075.214911] cfg80211:   (start_freq -
end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp) Oct 30 13:10:45
khamul kernel: [229075.214913] cfg80211:   (2402000 KHz
- 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)

followed by the usual verbose junk of reconnection logs.

I wouldn't even know where to start debugging this. The only unusual
part of the setup is I don't use the router's dhcp server, that is done
with dhcp-4.2.4_p2 on a separate wired Gentoo server.

Anyone have a logical series of debug steps I can apply?

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com