I am relatively new to using OpenWRT but I have had a stable installation for months before this issue started to occur.
The issue is that at seemingly random times my internet connection drops for just a second or two. It is so fast that I don't notice it unless I am using some kind of streaming service or Discord or Zoom. I have a Linksys MR8300 Tri-band router and I use one of the 5G bands as a client to eduroam wifi. To test if the ISP was the problem I connected a raspberry pi directly to eduroam rather than through my router. When the internet connection was disrupted on my router, it was not disrupted on the raspberry pi. So, I don't think the issue is with my ISP.
I was having this issue on an older version of OpenWRT 21. I figured that upgrading to the current release OpenWrt 22.03.3 would fix the issue but it hasn't. I did a fresh install and then just configured it again.
I am at a loss for what to do at this point. Any help troubleshooting this issue would be greatly appreciated.
Check the system log (logread) and keep it running in a ssh terminal (logread -f), hopefully you get to see an error message while it's occuring. Likewise wpa_cli might provide further information (at runtime, while it's happening).
I have found the issue, however I don't know how to resolve it.
After some more thorough monitoring I discovered that the disconnections happen almost exactly 4 hours apart every time. I checked the system logs using dmesg and I found that every time that I lose connection this error is reported in the log.
"Rekeying PTK for STA [MAC Address] but driver can't safely do that."
Followed by a number of other messages and eventually the router reconnects.
After a Google search I found some suggest changing the "eap_reauth_period" to 0 so that it doesn't try to rekey. But I'm not quite sure that this is something I can control because in this scenario my OpenWRT router is acting as a client not an access point. I'm not really sure how I can fix this. Any suggestions?