On Wednesday 27 June 2007 15:17:31 Michael Buesch wrote: > On Wednesday 27 June 2007 06:12:08 Ehud Gavron wrote: > > Ehud > > PS Ok, I thought bcm43xx vs bcm43xx_mac80211 was "soft" because it used > > softmac and bcm43xx_mac80211 used the old devicescape-stack which is > > alternately the "non-soft" (or hard) stack. If there's a better > > terminology, I look forward to being educated. > > Ehm... "soft" as in "software", not as in "soft pillow" ;)
I should probably explain it, though :) "softmac" is a general abbreviation for "Software-based Medium Access Control", Where the medium is the "air" (no, not the air, but the vacuum of the universe, but...). So it's a software based control layer for what's going on in the "air". In contrast to that there are wireless cards that implement a hardware-mac, so the kernel basically just sees the usual network packets, as they come from wired network, too. It's cheaper to create a softmac based card, as you have to do less in silicon or firmware. So it reduces the bare silicon and development costs of the device. The downside is that the CPU in the machine is a little bit busier when transmitting stuff. -- Greetings Michael. _______________________________________________ Bcm43xx-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/bcm43xx-dev
