From what I've seen, yes, they can coexist.  It's all a matter of telling your clients what wireless network to connect to.  If you have both access points and ad-hoc hosts, your clients should see both networks and then it's up to you to tell them the preferred ones.

For example, you might have an access point with an SSID of "AP2" and an ad-hoc machine with an SSID of "AH3".  If you have a wireless client, a laptop, it should find both networks as long as it's in range.  Now you just tell it which network to access based on the SSID and be on your way.

I'm not sure, but my guess is that it's preferred to have one or the other.  If you are going to run access points, then just have all your machines use them.  Ad-hoc is typically used in very small environments where only a couple machines need to access each other.

Message Edited by nurv on 12-05-2003 03:40 AM

Thanks for the reply.  I was wondering because I'm a student on campus, that has wireless in the dorms.  Well, some of the "smarter" computer guys says that Ad-hoc is what brings down the wireless network in the dorm.  I had a hard time believeing that since Ad-hoc doesn't use the AP's. It seemed that every time the wireless went down somebody would start sharing under Ad-hoc with the same name as the AP's.  So I was just curious if Ad-hoc was preciesly the problem.

Thanks agiain

Jordan

Under that scenereo, yes, Ad-Hoc (named the same as the AP SSID and probably the same channel) would interfere and wreak havoc with the AP(s).