Date: Sun, 04 Sep 2005 10:01:44 -0700 From: Sam Leffler <sam@errno.com> To: Alexander Leidinger <Alexander@Leidinger.net> Cc: arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 802.11 status and futures Message-ID: <431B2878.5090609@errno.com> In-Reply-To: <20050904122821.34ecbdf1@Magellan.Leidinger.net> References: <431A2C7A.6080005@errno.com> <20050904122821.34ecbdf1@Magellan.Leidinger.net>
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Alexander Leidinger wrote: > On Sat, 03 Sep 2005 16:06:34 -0700 > Sam Leffler <sam@errno.com> wrote: > > >>As soon as it's ok to have HEAD diverge I want to bring in an entirely >>new framework for doing scanning. This supports things like background >>scanning (scanning for ap's while associated), roaming, and enables >>station mode power save operation. These changes affect all drivers so >>committing them won't happen until I get help in updating and testing >>other drivers. > > > What kind of documentation is available? Is there an HOWTO, overview or > bare-bone-demo-driver with explanations available or do we have to use > the source? > > The gap between ath and the other drivers is getting larger and larger. > I wanted to add WPA support to wi a while ago, but after 30 minutes of > looking at the source and searching for documentation I still lacked > the big picture (I know nothing about the internals, I'm just a poor > user of 2 wi cards). Where to start, what feature can be implemented in > software, which one needs what kind of hardware support, what needs to > be implemented, what's optional, ...? I'm talking about documentation > which goes beyond what the man-pages provide currently. Documentation > which provides examples and/or teaches about how to write a driver. Do > we have something like this? The source code is the the place to learn about the net80211 functionality right now. If that's insufficient then I respond to questions. Otherwise there are many resources on the web to use in learning about wireless networking; the slides I referenced had many url's. The ath driver is the best example to work from to understand how a wide variety of features work. Some cards with more intelligence may require some tweaks at the net80211 level (e.g. to disable functionality that is implemented in the device). For wi a good place to learn about what's needed for WPA is Jouni Malinen's hostap driver for Linux. In general you need a way to defer ap selection on scan to the host, send+receive WPA information elements in 802.11 management frames and you need to be able to pass host-encrypted data. None of these are especially difficult but for wi are only supported by sta firmware revs >1.6 I believe. OTOH I personally believe that devoting energy to legacy parts like wi is a waste; people should be working on getting new devices like iwi, ipw, ral, etc working well. All these devices have linux drivers from which you can crib. Samhome | help
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