wireless disconnects ask authorization frequently again and again

[J]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 05:02, Robert Holtzman <holtzm at cox.net> wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 12:46:37PM +0530, Abhishek Dixit wrote:
>> I have a problem where after getting connected to internet with a
>> little browsing activity I notice that my internet suddenly
>> disappears.The NetworkManager was asking me for authorisation every
>> few minutes, suggesting that it was losing the connection or something
>> similar. Initially thought it to be a driver issue so purged the
>> broadcom STA driver and installed b43 firmware.But the problem did not
>> go. So re installed the broadcom STA driver.This is my home based
>> broadband connection.
>
> I was going nuts thinking I was the only one with that problem. Looking
> forward to seeing an answer to this.

What do you guys see in dmesg when this happens?  I see this as well,
and in my case it's because the wifi card in my thinkpad is failing.
This is mostly due to the fact that the cooling fans don't run at top
speed... there's a bug about that, and while there's no scientific
proof that this is the actual cause of failure, I've seen a lot of
anecdotal evidence that long term operation without proper cooling is
a possible cause.

So whether or not heat is the actual cause, I bought an external USB
wi-fi dongle and have never had that lose it's connection, while the
onboard wifi controller reliably fails after about 5 minutes,
sometimes faster.

To give you an idea what to look for, here's what lspci says about my
onboard wifi:
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N 1000

And THIS is what starts appearing in dmesg when the card fails:
[ 1740.021480] iwlagn 0000:02:00.0: MAC is in deep sleep!.
CSR_GP_CNTRL = 0xFFFFFFFF
[ 1740.039659] iwlagn 0000:02:00.0: MAC is in deep sleep!.
CSR_GP_CNTRL = 0xFFFFFFFF
[ 1740.057868] iwlagn 0000:02:00.0: MAC is in deep sleep!.
CSR_GP_CNTRL = 0xFFFFFFFF
[ 1740.076068] iwlagn 0000:02:00.0: MAC is in deep sleep!.
CSR_GP_CNTRL = 0xFFFFFFFF
[ 1740.094255] iwlagn 0000:02:00.0: MAC is in deep sleep!.
CSR_GP_CNTRL = 0xFFFFFFFF
[ 1745.090165] iwlagn 0000:02:00.0: Could not load the INST uCode section
[ 1745.090173] iwlagn 0000:02:00.0: Failed to start RT ucode: -110
[ 1745.090204] iwlagn 0000:02:00.0: Unable to initialize device.

This gets repeated over and over and over :(