partial answer to "unexplainable WiFi connection drops"

Previously, I blogged about some unexplainable WiFi connection drops I have been experiencing since a few days. Many thinks to everyone who replied by expressing their ire against Network-Manager. Unfortunately, it seems that the fault might indeed be on the WRT54GL's OpenWRT setup:

See, I have this old ThinkPad that I keep for Debian development purposes and that one runs whatever is on Debian/Testing, connecting to my LAN, using either an RTL8139-based Ethernet or an ATH5K-based WiFi adapter, plugged into the Cardbus slot; these days, more often the Atheros.

Now, this morning, I noticed that my Geode desktop stopped being able to ping both the Dell and the ThinkPad at the same time. Bingo! Now, the question is, how do I track the source of the problem, on this WRT54GL running White Russian?

unexplainable WiFi connection drops on Dell D430

Dear Lazyweb,

Since a few days, my Dell D430 running Ubuntu Jaunty has started to experience random WiFi connection drops. After a few hours of normal operation, even though the Network Manager applet indicates that the connection is still with me and with a strong signal, doing a ping to my WRT54GL running OpenWRT 0.9 (White Russian) replies with "Destination Unreachable".

My D430 comes with the following WiFi adapter:

0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network Connection (rev 61)

Does this situation sound familiar to anyone? If yes, how did you resolve it?