Narrowing it down... disconnects are due to "reason: 4", which is WIFI_REASON_AUTH_EXPIRE . According to the 802.11 spec , that means "Disassociated due to inactivity." Looking around the esp-idf source, I found this comment about inactivity in the wpa_supplicant code . Unfortunately the wpa library...

Digging a bit deeper, it appears that it has something to do with the server chip. If I connect the client ESP32 to a standard wifi network, it never disconnects.

Heya! Been toying with a couple of ESP32s recently and I'm running into an odd issue with the wifi. I set up one chip as an access point and the other as a client. They successfully authenticate, connect, and receive a DHCP assignment, but after 291.992s the client goes appears to go from "run" to "...