[MLB-WIRELESS] Centrino to D-link520+ probs

[Nick Sibbing]

Gday All
I'm tring to get a simple ad-hoc connection happening between  

Ibm R40 thinkpad with intel 2100 3b mini PCI wireless adapter (centrino
badged)
Driver 1.2.1.11 (latest from ibm site)
to
PC with D-Link DWL-520+ pci adapter
Firmware 1.9 Utility 3.02

both systems running XP and talk to each other fine over ethernet

I've spent a bit of time fiddling in XP settings and the radios seems to
see each other but not answer each other (much) In the connection status
panel both list as connected and having sent data but neither recieves
any data or if they do very little eg 83kb. Reception issues are not a
problem. as they are only a metre apart at the moment. My mac can see
the network and ssid ok in kismac and it shows lots of packets floating
about.

D-Link card is 802.11a so I wondered if it wasn't talking to the 802.11b
centrino laptop? I tried setting the transmission type to auto and
manually setting it to 802.11b speeds.

After updating the laptop wireless driver it shows 20 or more spurious
network connections available all described in gibberish characters and
all listed as  802.11a which makes me wonder if the D-Link is still
broadcasting itself as an a type system

I get an impression from all you clever people on the list that D-Link
stuff can be problematic and I'm wondering if my next step is to upgrade
to the latest driver for the D-Link. Are there any firmware or drivers
to be avoided for DWL-520+ stuff?

My other assumption is that XP is generally pretty good for wireless
stuff so is it a good plan to stick with the option to let windows
handle the wireless setup?

I think I got a small improvement when I disabled the xp option relating
to QoS packet control this is when the status panels for the connections
showed a small amount of recieved data

If anyone can suggest areas for further testing or research that would
be a great help. I did try to get a connection to the mac to see if I
could isolate which radio was the problem but I wasn't able to get a
definitive result.

Regards
Nick Sibbing

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