Popular wireless networks, such as IEEE 802.11, work by association. Once associated to a particular network, either an AP based or an ad hoc network, the wireless card can receive and send traffic only on that network. The card cannot interact with nodes in another network if the nodes are operating on a different frequency channel. Further, a node in an ad hoc network cannot interact with a node in the infrastructure network even when they are operating on the same channel. This is because the IEEE 802.11 standard defines different protocols for communication in the two modes and it does not address the difficult issue of synchronization between different networks. As a matter of practical concern, most commercially available WLAN cards trigger a firmware reset each time the mode is changed from infrastructure to ad hoc or vice versa.