Hostapd and madwifi interaction

Hi 
i'm an University researcher, working with wireless devices.
I employ
hostapd with madwifi drivers, since i use atheros based
cards, and i
have a couple of doubts regarding the interaction between
the drivers
and hostapd (0.5.8) itself. 
In particular, do hostapd configurations override madwifi
configurations? Some examples: 
- if i set up a wep key with the "iwconfig ath0 key
s:goofy" command
(i.e. using the madwifi drivers), should i also add such
"goofy" key to
the hostapd.conf file? what happens if i don't? and if i do,
will i be
able to change the key without restarting the hostapd daemon
(i ask this
since i'm wondering about periodically changing the wep key
for security
reasons, because I'm using the madwifi ad-hoc mode that
seems to support
only the wep security framework)? 
- if i tell hostapd.conf that channel=60 (therefore
hw_mode=a), am i
allowed to change the channel through the wireless tools
without
restarting hostapd? 

Moreover, does hostapd keep an "associated station
list" separate from
the madwifi "associated station list"? I did set
ap_max_inactivity=30 in
order to have the ap consider gone a station that does not
send or ack
any frame for 30 seconds; then i performed a mobility test,
moving
(through the iwconfig ath0 ap new_mac_ap) the station from
an ap to a
new_ap, both of which running hostapd, and by observing the
madwifi
"associated stations list" on the old ap (through
the "watch -n1
wlanconfig ath0 list sta" command) i didn't see it
vanish from the old
ap. I actually saw it for a long period of time (around 5
minutes,
maybe) associated to both aps.... Is it an hostapd
configuration
problem?

Thanks in advance for your kind answers 
Best Regards
Stefano Paris

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