HOSTAP mode is B-compatible?

[Kan Cai]

Greetings all:

  Sorry if you receive this email multiple times. I was sending this email 
to current, but I guess here is more appropriate. (Let me know if it 
isn't).

  I currently set up a linksys WMP54G card (ralink chipset based) under 
Freebsd 6.0 to act as an access point, using hostap mode. It works great 
for other 802.11g clients, powerbook can connect to it without any 
problem.

  However, it seems that the 802.11b cards cannot associate OR receive 
messages from the access points. I first used an orinoco golden card, it 
cannot even detect the access point. Then I used a cisco aironet card. It 
can probe and associate with the access point. But the ping fails. Using 
tcpdump, the problem turns out that it cannot receive the ARP reply sent 
from the Linksys WMP54G access point. However, the APR request can be 
successfully delivered to the access point. I have also checked the ARP 
and routing tables, all seem to be fine.

  The ifconfig output of the WMP54G looks as follows:

  ral0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        inet6 fe80::212:17ff:fe64:5b5d%ral0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2
        inet 192.168.1.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
        ether 00:12:17:64:5b:5d
        media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect <hostap>
(autoselect <hostap>)
        status: associated
        ssid ken channel 4 bssid 00:12:17:64:5b:5d
        authmode OPEN privacy OFF txpowmax 100 protmode CTS dtimperiod 1
        bintval 100

  Need to mention that I have tried to set AP mode to 11b and media to 
DS/11Mbps, but it doesn't work either. Specially when set the mode to 11b, 
it breaks the communication with the 11G clients. And it cannot recover 
even when setting mode back to 11g or auto. I have to reboot to solve the 
problem.

  I dbout if this is b-compatible problem, and am curious that if it is 
possible to do this. Is this possible a bug in net80211 layer or the 
driver itself? The client side uses FreeBSD 5.3, I'll assume it doesn't 
matter, or does it?

  Please let me know if anything I am doing wrong. I'll surely appreciate 
any help on this matter.

cheers,
--ken