A dot L dot M dot Buxey at lboro dot ac dot uk wrote:
>>Does anyone have any ideas why this might be happening?  Or strategies 
>>for debugging?
> 
> the poor performance was why m0n0 went back to 4.x BSD base for 1.2b8
> onwards. the complete loss of networking performance on the embedded
> boards was too much of a negative impact for the features gained.

Thanks. I'd read that there was an overall 5-15% drop, but this is 
weirder than that.  We did some more detailed testing today and found 
the following:

Prism-based 802.11b - works full speed 2.5 Mbps (our DSL speed) with 
FreeBSD 4.x based releases (including the latest 1.2b9).  With FreeBSD 
5.3 based releases the speed was 700-800kbps.

BUT, we found that we could get full speed through the Atheros card in 
802.11a BSS (client) mode (didn't try AP mode).

This is why its all a little strange ;-).

In our config we feed from other nodes via 802.11a and run a local AP 
using the Prism 802.11b card, with the DSL coming in via the single 
ethernet port. So other nodes on the network get full speed (via the 
802.11a), but local users don't (via 802.11b).

If we get a chance we'll try two Atheros cards instead of Atheros and 
Prism, but running as 802.11a client and 802.11b/g AP. If we get full 
speed from both cards, then our tentative conclusion is there's 
something wacky with the Prism driver in the FreeBSD 5.x builds.

We welcome more insights!

cheers, michael