Wireless card stops working on Linux

2 Tips, especially for ath9k users:

Tip 1 – Unload and Reload your driver

Have you tried turning it off and turning it on again? No, seriously. Unload and reload the driver. I had an ath9k card that would work again for hours after doing this:

$ modprobe -r ath9k
$ modprobe ath9k

Eventually it stopped working and I replaced it with a D-Link DWA-131. I could have tried tip 2 first:

Tip 2 – Turn off hardware encryption

The parameter name varies between drivers, but the method is largely the same:

Create/Edit driver options file:

$ sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/ath9k.conf

Put contents:

options ath9k nohwcrypt=1

Then reboot.