According to my experiments, any wifi card can (naturally) connect to a access point as a client and act as a server (most of them in ad-hoc mode).
Why can not a wifi card behave as both a client and a server at the same time?
Is there a hardware restriction that can not be worked around by a software? Can't switching between the modes be an option if we accept performance impact?
Best Answer
It's a driver limitation. There is no reason a wifi radio couldn't be both a client and server at the same time, but no-one has written driver software to do that because there is no real demand and the amount of work is considerable.