wireless connection vs. no connection indicator

I have an Airlink101 MIMO adaptor, not router and Win98se. When I start up
IE6, the wifi program finds and lists the available networks and may or may
not connect to one. After having it on for a while, it disconnect and
indicates no connection by way of the red indication in the system tray. I
then get a reliable, much faster connection.I don't know what is happening
but I would like to go directly to the faster connection instead of waiting
for disconnect. This works
consistently. When it first operated like this, I would get a message that
there is a IP address conflict with machine, but I don't get this anymore
which is fine with me.
Does anyone have an explanation