I hope that someone has some insight into my
situation.  I'm running
m0n0wall on a Soekris 4521 with a Senao 2511-CD 802.11b pcmcia card
(prism 2.5 chipset).  It's functional but I've got a frustrating problem
regarding the wireless mode.



When the wireless interface is in hostap mode performance is slow.  Web
pages hang half-way loading then resume loading after 30-60 seconds or so.



In IBSS mode, the performance is great but my laptop keeps
disconnecting
and reconnecting every few minutes.  It seems to be worse if other
people are using the wireless with me.  I'd rather avoid running in IBSS
because of the way Windows "devalues" ad-hoc networks in its
preferred
networks order.



In BSS mode it doesn't even broadcast a signal.  Neither Windows nor
Net
Stumbler see anything.



There are some collisions on the wireless interface, but I'm
attributing
that to being on the edge of someone else's home AP that's on a nearby
channel.  I don't think the collisions are the cause of all my problems
because I can switch from hostap to IBSS to get a better connetion and
back to hostap and see degradation again.



The Senao came with firmware version 1.4.9.  Yesterday I flashed it up
to 1.5.6 and I don't think that helped much, if at all.  I'd like to try
flashing it up to something even newer (1.7.9) but I've read that
FreeBSD (m0n0wall) drivers for Prism cards won't work well with firmware
newer than 1.5.6.



My questions are:

Why is hostap mode so much slower than IBSS?

Can I flash the 802.11b card's firmware above 1.5.6 for better results?

Shouldn't I be able to find my network when the wireless is in BSS
mode?

Why do I keep disconnecting and reconnecting when it's in IBSS mode?



Thanks for any help you can give.



Paul