Netgear MA311 - WLAN / hostap mode

[Andreas Bartelt <OpenBSD_(_at_)_bartula_(_dot_)_de>]

Hello,

I'd like to report some of my experiences/problems with the Netgear 
MA311 PCI WLAN adapter under OpenBSD. As client I used an Orinoco Gold 
PCMCIA card under PocketPC 2002 [some of my problems could be caused by 
this OS]. Currently I'm working with this setting in /etc/hostname.wi0:
up nwid MyAP nwkey 0x"a hexadecimal number..." mediaopt hostap
inet 192.168.0.1 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.255
!wicontrol wi0 -T 1 -e 1 -A 1 -f 11 -t 11

- The MA311 is not listed yet in the OpenBSD compatibility list. Why?
- I've tried different firmwares for the MA311 Prism chipset. The newest 
one (1.74) didn't work at all. I had no problems with the other firmware 
versions (1.36, 1.49, 1.56). Currently I'm using 1.56.
- Not all frequencies did work without problems, i.e. I can't use 
channel 3 (wicontrol -f 3), but channel 11 ist working fine. When using 
channel 3 connecting to the AP doesn't always work (weird behaviour - 
the connection quality itself is excellent if connecting succeeds). Is 
there an explanation for this issue?
- power managment. When using power managment (wicontrol -P 1) I have 
problems getting responses from my DNS properly. This issue was resolved 
by deactivating power management on the MA311 AND the Orinoco card.
- it seems that DS11 doesn't work (wicontrol -t 11). ifconfig -a shows
	media: IEEE802.11 DS11 hostap
 but wicontrol shows
	TX rate (selection):                    [ 11 ]
	TX rate (actual speed):                 [ 2 ]
 Shouldn't a 802.11b card be capable of 11Mbit/s according to the 
specification? (netgear support doesn't answer...)
- is "wicontrol -A 3" (104bit wep) not supported by the hardware or is 
this an OpenBSD issue?

thx in advance for proposals, solutions and explanations,
Andreas