Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-17 Thread Stuffed Crust
On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 10:24:41PM +, Alan Cox wrote: If I have told my equipment to obey UK law I expect it to do so. If I hop on the train to France and forget to revise my configuration I'd prefer it also believed the APs It's not that you might forget to revise your configuration, but

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-17 Thread Kyle Moffett
On Jan 17, 2006, at 13:41, Stuffed Crust wrote: On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 10:24:41PM +, Alan Cox wrote: If I have told my equipment to obey UK law I expect it to do so. If I hop on the train to France and forget to revise my configuration I'd prefer it also believed the APs It's not that

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-17 Thread Stefan Rompf
Am Sonntag 15 Januar 2006 21:11 schrieb Johannes Berg: [iwconfig mode ...] Yeah, I agree with this, it is much cleaner to handle in the kernel. Think about the issues if you have a struct net_device that has 250 bytes of payload for the struct virtual_sta_device in it and you want to switch

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-16 Thread Jiri Benc
On Fri, 13 Jan 2006 23:32:02 +0100, Johannes Berg wrote: IMHO there's not much point in allowing changes. I have a feeling that might create icky issues you don't want to have to tackle when the solution is easy by just not allowing it. Part of my thinking is that different virtual types have

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-16 Thread Stuffed Crust
On Sun, Jan 15, 2006 at 09:05:33PM +0200, Samuel Ortiz wrote: Regarding 802.11d and regulatory domains, the stack should also be able to stick to one regulatory domain if asked so by userspace, whatever the APs around tell us. ...and in doing so, violate the local regulatory constraints. :)

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-16 Thread Stuffed Crust
On Sun, Jan 15, 2006 at 11:53:55AM -0800, Sam Leffler wrote: The above is a great synopsis but there is more. For example to support roaming (and sometimes for ap operation) you want to do background scanning; this ties in to power save mode if operating as a station. Opportunistic roaming

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-16 Thread Stuffed Crust
On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 03:55:55PM +0100, Johannes Berg wrote: I really don't see why a plain STA mode card should be required to carry around all the code required for AP operation -- handling associations of clients, powersave management wrt. buffering, ... Sure, fragmentation From the

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-16 Thread Sam Leffler
Stuffed Crust wrote: On Sun, Jan 15, 2006 at 11:53:55AM -0800, Sam Leffler wrote: The above is a great synopsis but there is more. For example to support roaming (and sometimes for ap operation) you want to do background scanning; this ties in to power save mode if operating as a station.

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-16 Thread Sam Leffler
Stuffed Crust wrote: On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 03:55:55PM +0100, Johannes Berg wrote: I really don't see why a plain STA mode card should be required to carry around all the code required for AP operation -- handling associations of clients, powersave management wrt. buffering, ... Sure,

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-16 Thread John W. Linville
On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 08:51:31PM +0200, Samuel Ortiz wrote: On Mon, 16 Jan 2006, ext Stuffed Crust wrote: On Sun, Jan 15, 2006 at 09:05:33PM +0200, Samuel Ortiz wrote: Regarding 802.11d and regulatory domains, the stack should also be able to stick to one regulatory domain if asked so

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-16 Thread Stuffed Crust
On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 09:54:15AM -0800, Sam Leffler wrote: The way you implement bg scanning is to notify the ap you are going into power save mode before you leave the channel (in sta mode). Hence bg scanning and power save operation interact. That is not powersave operation -- that is

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-16 Thread Stuffed Crust
On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 09:07:52PM +0200, Samuel Ortiz wrote: That is true, thin MACs usually don't filter beacons on the same channel. But in some cases (mainly power saving), you really want to avoid receiving useless beacons and having the host woken up for each of them. You may even want

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-16 Thread Samuel Ortiz
On Mon, 16 Jan 2006, ext Stuffed Crust wrote: You may hear another beacon when the STA is awake, you may not. BSSID filtering has nothing to do with 802.11 power save, but rather is intented to reduce the host load (interrupts, processing overhead) and thus the host power consumption. I know

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-16 Thread Sam Leffler
Stuffed Crust wrote: On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 09:54:15AM -0800, Sam Leffler wrote: The way you implement bg scanning is to notify the ap you are going into power save mode before you leave the channel (in sta mode). Hence bg scanning and power save operation interact. That is not powersave

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-16 Thread Samuel Ortiz
On Mon, 16 Jan 2006, ext John W. Linville wrote: On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 08:51:31PM +0200, Samuel Ortiz wrote: On Mon, 16 Jan 2006, ext Stuffed Crust wrote: On Sun, Jan 15, 2006 at 09:05:33PM +0200, Samuel Ortiz wrote: Regarding 802.11d and regulatory domains, the stack should also be

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-16 Thread Stuffed Crust
On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 12:14:08PM -0800, Sam Leffler wrote: Please read what I wrote again. Station mode power save work involves communicating with the ap and managing the hardware. The first interacts with bg scanning. We haven't even talked about how to handle sta mode power save. I

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-16 Thread Stuffed Crust
On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 10:16:06PM +0200, Samuel Ortiz wrote: Well, I'd rather trust a governement regulated network than my neighbour's AP ;-) In fact, some phones set their 802.11 regulatory domain based on the information they received from a somehow government regulated network, e.g. a GSM

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-16 Thread Alan Cox
On Llu, 2006-01-16 at 14:06 -0500, John W. Linville wrote: If regulators come down on someone, it seems like common sense that they would be more lenient on mobile stations complying with a misconfigured AP than they would be with a mobile station ignoring a properly configured AP? I know

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-16 Thread John W. Linville
On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 10:24:41PM +, Alan Cox wrote: I would expect equipment to honour the subset of configurations that meet BOTH the regulatory domain the system believes it exists within (which may change dynamically!) AND the AP advertisement. If I have told my equipment to obey

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-15 Thread feyd
John W. Linville wrote: Configuration seems to be coalescing around netlink. Among other things, this technology provides for muliticast requests and asynchronous event notification. On the other hand, the tree structure of sysfs can handle the resource exclusivity and sharing naturaly. A

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-15 Thread Stefan Rompf
Am Freitag 13 Januar 2006 23:32 schrieb Johannes Berg: [Changing mode of virtual devices] IMHO there's not much point in allowing changes. I have a feeling that might create icky issues you don't want to have to tackle when the solution is easy by just not allowing it. Part of my thinking is

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-15 Thread Stefan Rompf
Am Samstag 14 Januar 2006 14:47 schrieb Ulrich Kunitz: They one problem I can see is scanning over several frequencies. If two virtual devices are doing this at the same time, we have a conflict. Maybe each WiPHY would have only one active interface, I think scanning can be easily serialized.

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-15 Thread Stuffed Crust
On Sat, Jan 14, 2006 at 05:07:01PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote: This can be accomplished by passing a static table to the register_wiphy_device() call (or perhaps via a struct wiphy_dev parameter) or through a more explicit, dynamic interface like: wiphy_register_supported_frequency(hw,

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-15 Thread Johannes Berg
Stefan Rompf wrote: Even though it is a bit more work on kernel side, we should allow changing the mode of virtual devices. Let's face it, even though we find multi-BSS capabilities very interesting, 999 of 1000 users won't care due to the two facts that IPW firmware IMHO doesn't allow it

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-15 Thread Stuffed Crust
On Sat, Jan 14, 2006 at 06:41:56PM -0500, Dan Williams wrote: One other thing: capability. It's not enough to be able to configure the device, user-space tools also have to know what the device is capable of before they try touching it. Ie, which ciphers, protocols, channels, etc. Similar

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-15 Thread Stefan Rompf
Am Sonntag 15 Januar 2006 16:51 schrieb Johannes Berg: Isn't that rather a question of having good user-space tools that make deactivating one type of interface and activating another seamless? Well, it's always easy to point to userspace. However, unregister_netdev() initiates a lot of

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-15 Thread Sam Leffler
Stefan Rompf wrote: Am Freitag 13 Januar 2006 23:32 schrieb Johannes Berg: [Changing mode of virtual devices] IMHO there's not much point in allowing changes. I have a feeling that might create icky issues you don't want to have to tackle when the solution is easy by just not allowing it.

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-15 Thread Sam Leffler
Stefan Rompf wrote: Am Samstag 14 Januar 2006 14:47 schrieb Ulrich Kunitz: They one problem I can see is scanning over several frequencies. If two virtual devices are doing this at the same time, we have a conflict. Maybe each WiPHY would have only one active interface, I think scanning can

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-15 Thread Sam Leffler
Stuffed Crust wrote: On Sat, Jan 14, 2006 at 05:07:01PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote: This can be accomplished by passing a static table to the register_wiphy_device() call (or perhaps via a struct wiphy_dev parameter) or through a more explicit, dynamic interface like:

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-15 Thread Johannes Berg
On Sun, 2006-01-15 at 12:08 -0800, Sam Leffler wrote: To do what you describe I would create a monitor mode device, switch channel, then destroy it. All the time you leave the station device unchanged, though you probably need to disable it. This may not be possible with all

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-15 Thread Samuel Ortiz
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006, ext Stuffed Crust wrote: * Knowing the hardware frequency capabilities, the 802.11 stack applies 802.11d and regdomain rules to the available frequency set, and Regarding 802.11d and regulatory domains, the stack should also be able to stick to one regulatory domain if

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-15 Thread Mike Kershaw
On Sun, Jan 15, 2006 at 11:39:41AM -0800, Sam Leffler wrote: The big stumbling block I found to going with virtual devices is that it affects user apps. I looked at doing things like auto-create a station device for backwards compatibility but decided against it. If you really want this

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-14 Thread Johannes Berg
On Fri, 2006-01-13 at 20:17 -0500, Stuffed Crust wrote: If you're talking about the former.. things get quite complicated, but that could be handled by having two WiPHY devices registered. The former; and yes, I thought about that too -- having a driver that shows two physical WiPHY devices

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-14 Thread Ulrich Kunitz
On Fri, 13 Jan 2006, John W. Linville wrote: Configuration = At init, physical devices should be represented by a WiPHY device, not directly by a net_device. The list of physical devices should be discoverable through netlink and/or sysfs. (A WiPHY device is an abstraction

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-14 Thread Jeff Garzik
Stuffed Crust wrote: The hardware knows what frequencies it supports. Unfortunately this has to be a somewhat dynamic thing, as this is often not queryable until the device firmware is up and running. This can be accomplished by passing a static table to the register_wiphy_device() call

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-14 Thread Dan Williams
On Fri, 2006-01-13 at 17:19 -0500, John W. Linville wrote: Configuration = Configuration seems to be coalescing around netlink. Among other things, this technology provides for muliticast requests and asynchronous event notification. The kernel should provide generic

wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-13 Thread John W. Linville
Configuration = Configuration seems to be coalescing around netlink. Among other things, this technology provides for muliticast requests and asynchronous event notification. The kernel should provide generic handlers for netlink configuraion messages, and there should be a

Re: wireless: recap of current issues (configuration)

2006-01-13 Thread Krzysztof Halasa
John W. Linville [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Virtual devices will have a mode (e.g. station, AP, WDS, ad-hoc, rfmon, raw?, other modes?) which defines its on the air behaviour. Should this mode be fixed when the wlan device is created? I think so. If needed one can delete and create. Or