"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 something
> that can be changed when the net_device is down?
IMHO: unnecessary complicates things.
> It may be necessary to remove, suspend, and/or disable wlan devices
> in order to add, resume, and/or enable other types of wlan devices
> on the same WiPHY device (especialy true for rfmon). A mechanism is
> needed for drivers to be able to influence or disallow combinations
> of wlan devices in accordance with capabilities of the hardware.
If the control messages go through the main (WiPHY) driver it can
decide and/or forward the request further, to the library.
Not sure about netlink. OTOH I'm at all not sure netlink should be
used for configuration. sysfs, ioctl seem a better options. Netlink
is better for state monitoring etc. I don't know it very well though.
> Do "global" config requests go to any associated wlan device?
Are they any global config settings?
sysctl or sysfs maybe?
> Or must they be directed to the WiPHY device? Does it matter?
If you mean "settings for a particular physical card" then WiPHY.
> I think we should require "global" configuration to target the WiPHY
> device, while "local" configuration remains with the wlan device.
If "local" means "concerning the wlan device" then sure, yes.
> (I'm not sure how important this point is?) Either way, the WiPHY
> device will need some way to be able to reject configuration requests
> that are incompatible among its associated wlan devices. Since the
> wlan interface implementations should not be device specific, perhaps
> the 802.11 stack can be smart enough to filter-out most conflicting
> config requests before they get to the WiPHY device?
I don't think so. The hardware driver should get the request first,
the rest should look like a library.
I've played with both approaches for years and I would avoid
"802.11 using the hw driver" scenario if at all possible.
--
Krzysztof Halasa
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