SSID authentication periodic failure

Question

Issue: intermittently, devices on my network will be unable to login to the wifi network, receiving an “incorrect password” or “password not recognised” response. Oddly inconsistent, the problem will appear once every few days at unpredictable times. More weirdly, it impacts SOME devices and not others: during any given incident two of us may be unable to login from our iphones but I can see the Chromecast is connected. Sometimes Alexa and my Macbook can’t connect while other devices are fine.

I have a roaming network setup: an AVM Fritz Box in charge of DHCP and hosting a 2.4 and 5 ghz SSID. I also have an Apple Airport Extreme set to bridge mode and also hosting a 2.4 and 5ghz identically named SSID. Each is automatically assigning their channels. All are set to WPA/WPA2 security.

I’ve witnessed both access points refusing to connect at different times. Last night the signal from the AVM Fritz Box was fine. If I walked an iPhone over to be physically closer than to the Airport Extreme, it logged in just fine. If I return to a point closer to the Airport, it eventually latches on to that signal but fails to connect, reporting incorrect password. But I’ve turned the Airport signal off entirely, and had the same incorrect password experience with the AVM Fritz Box as well.

I’m in a noisy neighborhood, have tried letting both devices set their own channels and forced them onto channels that were clear. I shut down a Chromecast device that was BLASTING a signal. All of these experiments take days to be proven ineffectual.

In WiFi.log on my mac I see the following suspicious reports from an incident last night in which even rebooting the Airport Extreme (unplug to power down) didn’t fix the problem.

    Sat Dec  2 22:41:40.751 <kernel> wl0: powerChange: *** BONJOUR/MDNS OFFLOADS ARE NOT RUNNING.
Sat Dec  2 22:42:16.003 <kernel> wl0: leaveModulePoweredForOffloads: Wi-Fi will stay on.
Sat Dec  2 22:42:16.003 <kernel> AirPort_Brcm43xx::platformWoWEnable: WWEN[enable], in_fatal_err[0]
Sat Dec  2 22:42:16.003 <kernel> AirPort_Brcm43xx::syncPowerState: WWEN[enabled]
Sat Dec  2 22:42:16.489 <kernel> IO80211Interface::updateReport _peerManager is missing
Sat Dec  2 22:42:16.575 <kernel> Setting BTCoex Config: enable_2G:1, profile_2g:0, enable_5G:1, profile_5G:0
Sat Dec  2 22:42:17.073 <kernel> AirPort_Brcm43xx::platformWoWEnable: WWEN[disable], in_fatal_err[0]
Sat Dec  2 22:42:17.213 <kernel> parseRSNIE: groupCipherType = 3 pairwiseCipherType = 5 authSel = 2
Sat Dec  2 22:42:17.213 <kernel> initWithInterfaceAndIE: _myMacAddress f4:5c:89:8a:d8:59
Sat Dec  2 22:42:17.213 <kernel> setPMK: PMK SET!
Sat Dec  2 22:42:17.313 <airportd[64]> ERROR: WiFiProxy (418) is not entitled for com.apple.wifi.events, but allowing anyways for event type 1 [And does this for event types 1..8]

Then there’s this oft-repeating block which seems to do with authitication:

Sat Dec  2 22:42:29.117 <kernel> RSNSupplicant: Releasing authenticator for 00:00:00:00:00:00
Sat Dec  2 22:42:29.122 <kernel> AirPort_Brcm4360::getSSIDData(): Get failure: APPLE80211_IOC_SSID: 6
Sat Dec  2 22:42:30.240 <kernel> parseRSNIE: groupCipherType = 3 pairwiseCipherType = 5 authSel = 2
Sat Dec  2 22:42:30.240 <kernel> initWithInterfaceAndIE: _myMacAddress XX.XX.XX.XX.XX.XX
Sat Dec  2 22:42:30.240 <kernel> setPMK: PMK SET!
Sat Dec  2 22:42:30.544 <kernel> Unexpected payload found for message 9, dataLen 0
Sat Dec  2 22:42:34.564 <kernel> Unexpected payload found for message 34, dataLen 2
Sat Dec  2 22:42:34.564 <kernel> payload Data 02 00 
Sat Dec  2 22:42:34.569 <kernel> en0: Terminating supplicant.

And this which appears to have something to do with login:

> Sat Dec  2 23:47:47.387 <kernel> IO80211Interface::updateReport
> _peerManager is missing Sat Dec  2 23:48:55.926 <kernel> Setting BTCoex Config: enable_2G:1, profile_2g:0, enable_5G:1, profile_5G:0
> Sat Dec  2 23:48:57.320 <airportd[64]> ERROR: loginwindow (106) is not
> entitled for com.apple.wifi.events.private, will not register for
> event type 100 [And does the same for event types 101, 7, 2, 5, and 6]

Anyone seen this or can parse those log messages to know what's going on?

Answer 1

I've seen all these messages, ad nauseam.You need a developer login to see this, but it clarifies why we've all been seeing this error.

com.apple.wifi.events.private

is part of CoreWLAN which is incompatible with the sandbox. The entitlement it's asking for is a sandbox entitlement. So, ERROR level message is thrown.

I'm surprised by this. It's an open bug. However, it's probably not the actual problem, although it does seem like A problem.

If you don't use AirDrop or related esoterica, try turning off awdl0 with ifconfig for a week.

sudo ifconfig awdl0 down

See if your WiFi is any more stable.

I have a sense that we all are looking locally for the source of these issues, but most of the functionality of these devices is remote, via iCloud.

Anyway, from the link below:

However, it's not possible for third-party apps to get the entitlement described in that log message, so that's a complete red herring. There seems to be a problem with CWWiFiClient where it requires that the app have a specific entitlement ("com.apple.wifi.events") even though entitlements are only meaningful in Mac App Store (and hence sandboxed) apps. This has been noticed by another developer, who filed a bug about it. Alas, that bug seems to have been misinterpreted, so I've filed my own bug about it. That bug hasn't yet come back to me, so I presume that it still applies. As to workarounds, your best option is to use the CWXxxDidChangeNotification notifications. While these are formally deprecated, they do still work and they're your only way forward until the above-mentioned bug is fixed.

(source)