From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-path: Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([66.187.233.31]:60894 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S933351AbXLMVd1 (ORCPT ); Thu, 13 Dec 2007 16:33:27 -0500 Subject: Re: status wireless extensions API for new drivers From: Dan Williams To: Bjorge Dijkstra Cc: linux-wireless In-Reply-To: <4761A108.2080005@jooz.net> References: <4761A108.2080005@jooz.net> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2007 16:33:05 -0500 Message-Id: <1197581585.14270.26.camel@localhost.localdomain> (sfid-20071213_213331_306506_538C6A9F) Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Thu, 2007-12-13 at 22:15 +0100, Bjorge Dijkstra wrote: > Hello all, > > I have been working on adding support for RNDIS based USB wireless Quick question about these; does the firmware on the wireless device itself talk RNDIS directly? i.e., is RNDIS intended to replace all the manufacturer-specific proprietary host<->adapter protocols? How common are the devices these days? I trawled through CDW this weekend and could only find one or two adapters (out of 30 or so) that were RNDIS. I assume it's the wave of the Windows future though. > devices[1]. Recently I've been getting some help from another developer > and the state of the driver has improved quite a bit. So we are thinking > about getting it into the mainline kernel. > We have used the Wireless Extensions API, but I get the impression that > things are moving towards the cfg/nl80211 API's. Is it still acceptable > for new drivers trying to get into mainline to use WEXT, or should we > switch to the new API's? Well, if you want to allow your driver to be backported at all, you'll pretty much have to support WEXT. _But_, since your driver doesn't have any need for backwards compatibility requirements since it's not already upstream, you might want to be the guinea pig for cfg80211/nl80211 :) If you decided to only support cfg80211, you'd get WEXT support since cfg80211 provides a backwards compat solution for WEXT. Plus you'd be helping out a great deal by finding and fixing bugs in cfg80211/nl80211 and proving the framework, which would be a great help. Dan