ath9k dead periods

[Jack Howarth]

   Is anyone else having problems with the ath9k wireless
drivers in current rawhide? I find that for all of the
kernels recently in rawhide that the wireless throughput
with dry up periodically. For example, if I do a yum update,
the downloads will periodically hang and then yum will
time out to a series of alternate servers. During this
period of time no network access is possible (dns/ftp/ssh)
from the machine in question. I am seeing this on a
MacBook Pro v2,1 connecting to an Apple Airport
Extreme Gigabyte wireless router that is configured for
N protocol on 5MHz frequencies only with wide channels
and a 6Mbps multicast rate. The same machine under
Mac OS X 10.5.6 has rock solid connectivity. During
these network dead periods, the NetworkManager in
the menu bar continues to show the signal level at
maximum level and there are no error messages in
the system log related to the ath9k driver in use.
This bug basically makes linux unusable over wireless   
connections.
               Jack