Update: WPA, Ubuntu, and my Linksys WUSB54GC

I've been analyzing the logs from syslog and kern.log and I can see no real errors happening during the instance of the failure.  I can further confirm that reconnecting will not fix the connection stability.  Also, I can clearly see that rekeying does not bring down the internet connection.

What seems to stabilize the connection is if I re-apply my router settings on WiFi.  Then, it will run without issues for a while and then run into the connection drops.  It doesn't totally disconnect from my access point.  It just seems to lose packets.  But since there's no errors in the logs, it is unclear why this error happens at all.  I did read some person saying that when the device would scan for 802.11 n access points, the connection would momentarily fail.  I doubt that is the case, but I've reconfigured my router to be 802.11 b and 802.11 g for the outside chance that my router causes weird problems with 802.11 n.

WPA and the Ralink RT73 USB driver

After many years of using WEP security with MAC address filters so I could accommodate my old DS and my (dead) Zaurus to use online connectivity, I decided to make the switch to WPA-Personal with the same MAC address filters.  This is when I discovered that the Ralink RT73 USB drivers has an issue when the router does the WPA group rekey.  It seems that as soon as the router switches the secret keys, the device has trouble coping with the connection.  The connection becomes unstable and it seems that I have to disconnect and reconnect to my access point to get a stable connection.  I am still digging information on what to do about this and I want to avoid ndiswrapper as much as possible.

Bus 002 Device 003: ID 13b1:0020 Linksys WUSB54GC v1 802.11g Adapter [Ralink RT73]

and here's the entry in my /var/log/syslog

wpa_supplicant[1060]: wlan0: WPA: Group rekeying completed [mac address] [GTK=TKIP]