On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 11:33 PM, Michael Stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Therefore: do we have any > interest in developing such a feature?
Yes, we want this. The main thing with 802.11abg is that we need to pick an essid using a reasonably stable mechanism. A few months ago we discussed the topic of selecting an essid (on techteam - no archive link, sorry). The summary I have of that conversation is that we can hardcode an essid prefix or suffix and assoc to the first open signal matching it: - Local deployments will probably want to use an ESSID that means "school" in a local language. (Sidenote: is utf-8 usable in ESSID strings? Sorting/collation rules to pick "the first" matching utf-8 ESSID are a potential headache.) - An alternative is to just hardcode 'SCHOOLSERVER'. The same signal, however, will be usually be used to associate to the XS, so it's better that it has a localised name for when users pick it from the 'Network view'. - Mitch offered to code up a chooser UI, but it was later agreed it was overkill. - The ad-hoc IPv4 self-assignment done for mesh is ugly but ok. The XS will talk to IPv4 addresses in that range over mesh or abg. - This assumes the signal will be unencrypted. Supporting encryption so early in the game adds a lot of complexity - complex WiFi setups can broadcast an unencrypted ESSID for activation services, and an encrypted signal for the rest of their traffic. - If/when we get a stable Libertas HostAP driver, we can teach the XS to run such a dual-signal configuration if desired. - One thing to keep in mind: no matter what technique we use to pick the ESSID, someone with an AP set to the same ESSID and channel can DoS us and make a bit of a mess. There aren't any usable workarounds. OTOH, we can tell good data from bad as is signed. cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel