nm tries to use nl80211 interface for communiation with devices like ipw2200 that don't really support this.

[Omar Siam <simar gmx net>]

For me nm is not working with ipw2200 because it sticks to nl80211 
interface which only seems to be sort of supported by the ipw2200.ko of 
kernel 3.2.x (in ubuntu precise, but i don't see any difference 
regarding this issue to the vanilla stable 3.2.x kernel). The interface 
doesn't report any encryption capabilities. This might be a kernel issue 
because the kernel obviously doesn't tell userspace that this is just 
sort of supported. I just wonder why wext interface isn't used because 
there is a wext-compat which makes this interface available even for 
pure nl80211 devices?