lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2006]   [Jan]   [15]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
    /
    Date
    From
    SubjectRe: wireless: recap of current issues (other issues)
    On Sat, Jan 14, 2006 at 05:09:23PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
    > A big open issue: should you fake ethernet, or represent 802.11
    > natively throughout the rest of the net stack?
    >
    > The former causes various and sundry hacks, and the latter requires that
    > you touch a bunch of non-802.11 code to make it aware of a new frame class.

    Internally, we're pure 802.11. One thing to keep in mind that we're not
    going to be bridging/translating non-data traffic to other networks, and
    with that in mind, 802.3<->802.11 translation is trivial, and won't lose
    anything except for a bit of efficiency. (and then, just to be
    contrary, the prism54 hardware actually requires 802.3 frames!)

    That said.. we need to make the rest of the stack 802.11-aware.
    Translating between 802.11 and 802.3 is trivial, as we only need to know
    about a few operating parameters in order to perform the conversion --
    AP/STA mode, BSSID, QoS parametsrs. WDS link parameters. All of these
    can be attached to the net_device to be used by the hard_header code.

    (Part of the problem is that 802.11 has a variable-length header - 24,
    26, 30, or 32 bytes, and each address field means different things
    depending on which mode we're using..)

    Meanwhile, A current "good enough for most" solution is to make all
    "data" interfaces to the 802.11 stack appear as 802.3 interfaces. Each
    of these net_devices could translate to/from 802.11 on the fly. Thus
    internally the stack would be pure 802.11, but interacting with the
    outside world would depend on the "mode" of the net_device. You want
    to tx/rx 802.11 management frames with QoS enabled? Create a "type
    802_11_a3_qos" inteface.

    - Solomon
    --
    Solomon Peachy ICQ: 1318344
    Melbourne, FL
    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
    [unhandled content-type:application/pgp-signature]
    \
     
     \ /
      Last update: 2006-01-15 16:43    [W:2.999 / U:0.564 seconds]
    ©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site