So I just decided today that I was going to update my rather out of date kernel from last year in my custom distro. Anyway the old kernel did not have the intel drivers that the new one does also they were not yet using the new wireless stack that is now being used. I have 2 questions if anyone else out there is using the intel 3945 adapter.

1. Is wpa_supplicant still needed to get connected to wpa encrypted networks. Since the newer version of wireless tools seams to have better wpa stuff and uses the new network stack

2. Does the newer drivers solve the cycle problem that you get with wpa networks where if there is no traffic you loose access to the network for extended periods untill it reconnects. ( not sure if this is a common problem but it is something that i had and issue with)


One thing you may ask yourself is why am I asking this here and not just going though the rebuild and fining out. one of the reasons is that I have built some infrastructure around the current way of doing it and I would hate to remove all of that just to find that the new stuff does not work and have to wrestle stuff back to playing nice.

Over all I am hoping i can do away with wpa_supplicant and the old binary daemon from Intel as it never did shutdown right and always left its pid file in /var/run behind after a restart or a reboot.

Thanks for any help you can offer