Hi

I'm experiencing problems setting up an OpenBSD box as a 
firewall/Wireless Access Point and wonder if I can get some advice from 
someone who has previously set this up. I've tried everything I can 
think of but have run out of ideas.

Firstly my setup:
* I've tried this using OpenBSD v4.1, v4.6 and a 4.8 snapshot from 
29/10/20 all with similar results.
* I've tried various different wireless cards based on either the Prism 
(wi0) or Ralink 2561 (ral0) chipsets.
* I've used 4 different machines, admittedly all low horsepower 
machines, from 400MHz PII to 1.2GHz Athlon
* I've tried with pf enabled and disabled. This makes no difference.
* I've used WEP and WPA-PSK with no difference in outcome
* I've tried configuring the interface in both "ibss" and "hostap" mode. 
I'm aware of the caveat regarding hostap mode and power saving mode in 
the client and have ensured that the clients (various WinXP times 2, and 
Brother wireless enabled printer)  have this disabled but the packet 
loss occurs in both ad-hoc and hostap modes anyway. Most google results 
mention the hostap/power save issue.

On each occasion I get anywhere up to 75% packet loss or long periods of 
several tens of seconds where the wireless link is down. Often the 
clients are completely unable to associate with the access point/peer 
and the link is most unstable. I have tried this with the two machines 
side by side and at a distance of >10m but even with a link of only a 
few feet I still get packet loss.

I've tested by pinging both ends both individually, and simultaneously, 
and the packet loss occurs in both directions.
At the same time, I can use the same wireless cards in a Windows XP 
machine and get zero packet loss and a completely stable link in an 
ad-hoc network so I'm sure that the hardware is OK and the wireless 
radio does work.

My /etc/hostname.ral0/wi0 is something like the following depending on 
the options I've chosen:
inet 192.168.5.1 255.255.255.0 NONE media autoselect mediaopt hostap 
nwid Homenet nwkey <my pass>

I'm afraid I don't have my dmesg handy but I'll attempt to post this 
soon.. The fact that my configuration is failing every time despite 
running on numerous different hardware/software combinations makes me 
think that there's something fundamental that I've missed.

Can anyone point me to something that could either solve this or start 
me looking in the right direction. Is there some sysctl value that I 
need to check/set ? (...in the morning after I get some sleep!!)

Thanks in advance
Jeremy