Debian Wheezy, hostapd running but no AP detected by clients

Question

I've an TL-WN951N (AR5416+AR5008) using ath9k module running an hostapd and a dhcp for it.
So hostapd starts fine:

$ hostapd wifi.test 
Configuration file: wifi.test
Using interface int1 with hwaddr f4:ec:38:9b:d4:93 and ssid 'test'

hostapd.conf:

interface=int1
driver=nl80211
ssid=test
channel=1

But nobody seems to find it or being able to see it or connect to it by setting BSSID to 'test'.
I'm quite frustrated now, I find 'howto' after 'howto' from people with same chipsets and it always seemed to work out great for them - but not here...
iw list even shows up the AP mode being present at the interface...

Thanks for your help

Answer 1

This seems to be the case. I have tried the very same thing with the same card. Once like every 20 times I do ifup I can see the SSID, and when I do see it it is practically impossible to connect due to packet loss and latency.

I updated the kernel to 3.6.6 and compiled hostapd 1.0.

No improvement.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1032826

(Update: I bought a TL-WDN4800 instead. No problems at all. Got it working in just a couple of minutes using hostapd 0.7.3 and kernel 3.6.6.)