router with 5 cards or more

[Christian Zoffoli]

Hi to all.
I've tried to install 5 cards on a new P4 boards (supporting APIC), but 
I have found a strange behaviour with the hostap driver (same with 4 cards):

after typing iwconfig:

wlan0     IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"test"
           Mode:Master  Frequency:2.422GHz  Access Point: 00:02:6F:01:86:08
           Bit Rate:11Mb/s   Tx-Power:2 dBm   Sensitivity=1/3
           Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
           Encryption key:off
           Power Management:off
           Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
           Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
           Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

wlan0ap   IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"test"
           Mode:Master  Frequency:2.422GHz  Access Point: 00:02:6F:01:86:08
           Bit Rate:11Mb/s   Tx-Power:2 dBm   Sensitivity=1/3
           Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
           Encryption key:off
           Power Management:off

wlan0sta  IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"test"
           Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.422GHz  Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
           Bit Rate:11Mb/s   Tx-Power:2 dBm   Sensitivity=1/3
           Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
           Encryption key:off
           Power Management:off

wlan1     IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"test"
           Mode:Master  Frequency:2.422GHz  Access Point: 00:02:6F:01:F8:51
           Bit Rate:11Mb/s   Tx-Power:-6 dBm   Sensitivity=1/3
           Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
           Encryption key:off
           Power Management:off
           Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
           Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
           Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

wlan1ap   IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"test"
           Mode:Master  Frequency:2.422GHz  Access Point: 00:02:6F:01:F8:51
           Bit Rate:11Mb/s   Tx-Power:-6 dBm   Sensitivity=1/3
           Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
           Encryption key:off
           Power Management:off

----

Kernel version 2.5.65 (with 2.4.20 I can't enable the APIC support).
hostap CVS 20030309

Any suggestions?

How many cards does the hostap driver support in a single host?
Is is possible to use 10 or 12 cards (using dual pcmcia adapters) ?


Regards,
Christian