Wifi status indicator

Since setting up my new Pi5 some oddities have emerged with
the WiFi, includidng seemingly slow/erratic ping times despite
a near 100% link quality as measured with wavemon. The icon
in the top menu bar didn't light up all the way, suggesting
some disagreement between wavemon and the OS . At one point
wavemon reported that rfkill had prevemted wifi startup, though
rfkill reported both wifi and bluetooth unblocked. There was
one report online of a bookworm bug along this line, does it
aply to RasPiOS?

Between the two, I'm rather confused. Over the past year or
two wifi has gotten worse,I thought because of interference
from neighbors, who now number close to 20. But, during a scan
wavemon consistently reports my access point as the strongest
signal. Is "strongest signal" not sufficient by itself?

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska