Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 22:45:16 -0600 (MDT) From: "M. Warner Losh" <imp@village.org> To: grog@FreeBSD.org Cc: cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/share/man/man4 wi.4 Message-ID: <20020503.224516.115910512.imp@village.org> In-Reply-To: <20020504113032.D12386@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: <200205031811.g43IBIp38028@freefall.freebsd.org> <20020504113032.D12386@wantadilla.lemis.com>
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In message: <20020504113032.D12386@wantadilla.lemis.com>
"Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog@FreeBSD.org> writes:
: On Friday, 3 May 2002 at 11:11:18 -0700, Warner Losh wrote:
: > imp 2002/05/03 11:11:18 PDT
: >
: > Modified files:
: > share/man/man4 wi.4
: > Log:
: > Minor tweaks:
: > o go ahead and document ibss-master and ibss modes, since there are
: > patches in the pipeline to support them.
:
: OK, now I'm thoroughly confused. What's the difference between IBSS
: and IBSS master? My understanding was that the term "master" applied
: to the station providing the BSSID in IBSS mode, and that it didn't do
: anything else. Is this just a way to tell the driver whether to form
: an IBSS or not? If so, I'd suggest that you find some other term to
: describe that station, since "master" suggests some other
: functionality.
No, that't it. ibss-master provides the network name so that all the
other cards can talk to each other. OpenBSD already uses this term,
and there's absolutely no sense in being gratutitously incompatible.
It isn't ideal, but changing the name will make it harder to share
code with OpenBSD. I'm trying to merge the drivers, so that is a big
deal to me. Since OpenBSD has already done 3.1 with "ibss-master" in
it, it is too late for them to change, so we're stuck with it.
: > o Note that they aren't implemented yet.
:
: What needs to be done that wicontrol -p 1 -c 1 won't do?
nothing, except adding mediaopt support to wi.
: I think it's *very* confusing to have mediaopts "ibss" and "adhoc".
: According to the standard, they're the same thing (alright, literally:
:
: The term ad hoc is often used as slang to refer to an IBSS.
:
: At the very least, the mediaopt adhoc should be renamed demo-adhoc.
: And yes, I think that it should be long enough to stop people going
: for it automatically. It would probably be a good idea to have adhoc
: as a synonym for ibss.
I'm sorry, but no. That's not going to happen. We are going to be
compatible with the *BSD on this one. The docs will explain it. The
official name is IBSS, and adhoc is an imprecise slang term that
traditionally has ment demo-adhoc mode in FreeBSD. If we were to
rename it demo-adhoc and make adhoc a synonym of ibss, that would
break people that have already deployed wireless systems (since old
lucent cards don't do ibss), and would be incompatible with the other
BSDs.
In short, that's a nice suggestion, but about 9 months too late since
we've supported adhoc == "lucent's demo ad-hoc mode" in -stable since
4.3 or 4.4. I have wireless links deployed that depend on this not
breaking when I upgrade.
: There's also a typo in the commit. I'd suggest the following changes:
:
: --- wi.4 3 May 2002 18:11:17 -0000 1.18
: +++ wi.4 4 May 2002 01:58:34 -0000
: @@ -49,7 +49,7 @@
: .Pp
: All host/device interaction is via programmed I/O.
: Supported features include 802.11 and 802.3 frames, power management, BSS,
: -IBSS, WDS and ad-hoc operation modes.
: +IBSS, WDS and "demo ad-hoc" operation modes.
: Cards based on the Intersil PRISM-II and PRISM-2.5 chips also support a
: host-based access point mode which allows a card to act as a normal access
: point (with some assistance from the
Fair enough.
: @@ -212,14 +212,14 @@
: wepkey 0x8736639624
: .Ed
: .Pp
: -Join an ad-hoc network with network name
: +Join a demo ad-hoc network with network name
"Join an old-style lucent ad-hoc network with network name" would be
better.
: .Dq my_net .
: .Bd -literal -compact -offset indent
: # ifconfig wi0 inet 192.168.0.20 netmask 0xffffff00 ssid my_net \e
: - mediaopt adhoc
: + mediaopt demo-adhoc
Since I'm not renaming, this isn't a good change.
: .Ed
: .Pp
: -Create an IBBS network with network name
: +Create an IBSS network with network name
: .Dq my_net .
: .Bd -literal -compact -offset indent
: # ifconfig wi0 inet 192.168.0.20 netmask 0xffffff00 ssid my_net \e
: @@ -228,7 +228,7 @@
: Note: The infrastructure for mediaopt ibss-master has not been
: committed yet.
: .Pp
: -Join an IBBS network with network name
: +Join an IBSS network with network name
: .Dq my_net .
: .Bd -literal -compact -offset indent
: # ifconfig wi0 inet 192.168.0.22 netmask 0xffffff00 ssid my_net \e
Good catch. Thanks.
Warner
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