[gentoo-user] wpa_supplicant confusion

[Mick]

I am not sure I can explain this:

I can connect to an AP (using WEP), but only after I run

# iwconfig wlan0 ap auto

Within the next few seconds I get an IP via dhcpcd and I can immediately 
connect to the Internet, but very unreliably.  Within a few seconds it seems 
that the link goes down, i.e. I can no longer ping Internet addresses, or the 
AP, despite iwconfig showing that all is fine connection wise:

# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"daddy"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.442 GHz  Access Point: 00:18:4D:AE:55:2C   
          Bit Rate=12 Mb/s   Tx-Power=27 dBm   
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2346 B   
          Encryption key:8B7B-9671-89
          Link Quality=31/100  Signal level=-56 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

wpa_cli also shows that the connection is OK:

> status
bssid=00:18:4d:ae:55:2c
ssid=daddy
id=2
pairwise_cipher=WEP-40
group_cipher=WEP-40
key_mgmt=NONE
wpa_state=COMPLETED
ip_address=192.168.0.9

Ping-ing the AP has some ridiculous latency, or it fails completely:

$ ping -c 3 192.168.0.1
PING 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=6737 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=6725 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=7736 ms

--- 192.168.0.1 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2009ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 6725.875/7066.811/7736.602/473.648 ms, pipe 3

This is what's in the wpa_supplicant conf:

network={
       ssid="daddy"
       bssid=00:18:4D:AE:55:2C
       key_mgmt=NONE
#       mode="managed"
       wep_key0=8B7B967189
#       wep_key1="BA6889DB39"
#       wep_key2="D3D68AA753"
#       wep_key3="35116656AB"
       wep_tx_keyidx=0
       group=WEP40
       priority=4
}

Any idea?
-- 
Regards,
Mick