From owner-freebsd-wireless@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Sep 9 05:54:27 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-wireless@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 08AF6100; Tue, 9 Sep 2014 05:54:27 +0000 (UTC) Received: from ns.kevlo.org (220-135-115-6.HINET-IP.hinet.net [220.135.115.6]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (Client CN "ns.kevlo.org", Issuer "ns.kevlo.org" (not verified)) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 472AD206; Tue, 9 Sep 2014 05:54:25 +0000 (UTC) Received: from ns.kevlo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ns.kevlo.org (8.14.8/8.14.8) with ESMTP id s895rCAs018951 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=NO); Tue, 9 Sep 2014 13:53:12 +0800 (CST) (envelope-from kevlo@ns.kevlo.org) Received: (from kevlo@localhost) by ns.kevlo.org (8.14.8/8.14.8/Submit) id s895rBDC018950; Tue, 9 Sep 2014 13:53:11 +0800 (CST) (envelope-from kevlo) Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2014 13:53:10 +0800 From: Kevin Lo To: Adrian Chadd Subject: Re: TL-WN722N support on FreeBSD. Message-ID: <20140909055310.GA18936@ns.kevlo.org> References: <20140830195721.GA12450@neutralgood.org> <5403AD08.60605@pinyon.org> <20140901105350.GJ57121@e-new.0x20.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.22 (2013-10-16) Cc: "freebsd-wireless@freebsd.org" X-BeenThere: freebsd-wireless@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18-1 Precedence: list List-Id: "Discussions of 802.11 stack, tools device driver development." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 05:54:27 -0000 On Mon, Sep 01, 2014 at 11:11:20AM -0700, Adrian Chadd wrote: > > The problem -is- the money. The people will come when there's enough > interest and enough money. > > The problem is that people think things like wifi drivers that are > debugged, perform well and get updated as new standards appear is a > few months effort - and I think the herculean efforts done in the past > by people like Sam fuel this myth. > > I've spent almost two years of weekends and evenings hacking on > net80211 and the atheros driver to get it to where it is. The 11n > support for atheros chips appeared when someone (hi Hobnob!) paid me > for six months to get 11n done. I'm still debugging weird corner cases > with rate control and congestion handling even now. And this is _on > top_ of all the work done by the Atheros team to write the HAL in the > first place. > > I've spent almost 18 months of weekends/evenings hacking on the intel > iwn driver to find all the little odd corner cases that make it > unusable by a lot of people. I keep saying I'm not, but since the > laptops I'm using have iwn in them, I end up getting annoyed enough to > fix it. This has all been for free. > > Wireless stuff is a very complicated, very time consuming thing that's > immensely fun if you're into this kind of thing. But please understand > - it's a huge time commitment for each individual device and new > standard. > > So yes, it's the money. I've jokingly said that it's $100k and 2 years > for me in (evenings, weekends) time and equipment to port and debug > one driver for a given NIC. Not just do a "oh look here's an openbsd > driver ported from linux in a month" port - that's just the beginning > (and I tend to quote something like $10k for that) - I mean, something > that ends up implementing the updated standards (11n, 11ac soon); > something that includes powersave, something that includes debugging, > something that handles a multitude of bad environments that people see > every day and complain about. Ie - the level of work that makes it "oh > it just works, I can get on with work now" level of work. > > I don't want to let myself be dragged into another two years of > weekends. I kind of need some sleep here and there. I can't find a reason why I disagree with you. I have almost forgotten that wifi hacking can be fun if it results in something working... > -a Kevin