From owner-freebsd-wireless@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Sep 1 18:11:21 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-wireless@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 9905A4FD for ; Mon, 1 Sep 2014 18:11:21 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-qc0-x231.google.com (mail-qc0-x231.google.com [IPv6:2607:f8b0:400d:c01::231]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA (128/128 bits)) (Client CN "smtp.gmail.com", Issuer "Google Internet Authority G2" (verified OK)) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 56D2E1D06 for ; Mon, 1 Sep 2014 18:11:21 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-qc0-f177.google.com with SMTP id i8so5765770qcq.36 for ; Mon, 01 Sep 2014 11:11:20 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:sender:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject :from:to:cc:content-type; bh=ft/U897DRIxxSOMdUS0PqDfyYgcORdKXVGoA0jrtNhY=; b=c0ReGm0U7e+sERo7AsyIvgOWV4KIc1DDcSZoIwiFo4aXR7ACOxvVsKWmKbholB/WED vAepIT5e89EioPFLHJo/UpUTslXqXbPcsl9eW6ZW+ydIjPHwHfqofRVuwTYX2eAAp5od N5wBAUmV4ED4sB2JpB6cEQiSl5hOjD0WtacdOpp/VYdGCJtvtSq9917oHKpeWRM5nhni dEF+CNJhDdrwrrDqllY0omsPdEzU7jOZLwh1loCUO+H3Dtp9lbn5XAZTvBWAH4fpD1uh f6UaOdMVs8/BrKpZ8Wv2Wbc6yRi/p12Mr72n5KkJXTzDQ5tOm3g+z+q3Ay/ncojQpkIc e4QA== MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Received: by 10.224.151.69 with SMTP id b5mr48285315qaw.37.1409595080491; Mon, 01 Sep 2014 11:11:20 -0700 (PDT) Sender: adrian.chadd@gmail.com Received: by 10.224.39.139 with HTTP; Mon, 1 Sep 2014 11:11:20 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <20140901105350.GJ57121@e-new.0x20.net> References: <20140830195721.GA12450@neutralgood.org> <5403AD08.60605@pinyon.org> <20140901105350.GJ57121@e-new.0x20.net> Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2014 11:11:20 -0700 X-Google-Sender-Auth: jmVlQ7DxN0K6-qgg-U5AZ2nNedA Message-ID: Subject: Re: TL-WN722N support on FreeBSD. From: Adrian Chadd To: Lars Engels Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 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: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 18:11:21 -0000 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. -a