I'm investigating an issue with an iPhone controllable hardware, which operates in IBSS / Ad Hoc mode. Since the hardware generation of iPhone6 & Co the iDevices can't connect to the hardware anymore, which creates the wifi network with a deprecated Microchip 802.11 b listening only to 1 / 2 Mbit / s.

I've narrowed down the problem with wireshark (see screenshots):

1.) The Microchip wifi Beacon announces the network, I assume the BSSID is randomly assigned in IBSS / Ad Hoc mode.

2.a) The iPhone5 sends a probe request to destination broadcast and receives the probe response announcing that the Microchip can only listen on 1 / 2 Mbit / s. Further conversation works just fine.

2.b) The iPhone6 sends a probe request to the randomly assigned BSSID and never receives a probe response, therefore not knowing that the Microchip can only listen on 1 / 2 Mbit / s and starts talking at 12 Mbit / s in further conversation, which obviously doesn't work.

The question now is which of the two wifi firmwares behaves not according to the 802.11-2012 standard?

Either iPhone6 Broadcom WiFi firmware, that sends the Probe Request to the BSSID of the Ad Hoc network (instead of the MAC of the Microchip WiFi chip or the Microchip firmware, that doesn't answer the Probe Request when sent to the BSSID of the Ad Hoc network it created initially?

I haven't found anything in the 802.11-2012 standard, yet, what the appropriate destination address of a probe request in an 802.11 Ad Hoc network would be (broadcast or the BSSID of the beacon). Is there an expert out there, who can give some insights and probably references to the standard where that is defined?

Thanks.

[![enter image description here][1]][1]


[![enter image description here][2]][2]


  [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/rCgJQ.png
  [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/ww7tD.png