Re: Exposing bssid information

[James Prestwood <prestwoj@gmail.com>]

Hi Jim,

On 2/15/25 12:10 PM, James Hanley wrote:
> Hi,
> I’m looking to access (and/or expose) via dbus scanned information on
> bssid. Specifically, information as follows:
>
> {
>    "wifiAccessPoints": [
>   {
>    "macAddress": "f0:d5:bf:fd:12:ae",
>    "signalStrength": -43,
>    "signalToNoiseRatio": 0,
>    "channel": 11,
>    "age": 0
> },
> {
>    "macAddress": "3c:37:86:5d:75:d4",
>    "signalStrength": -35,
>    "signalToNoiseRatio": 0
> },
> {
>    "macAddress": "30:86:2d:c4:29:d0",
>    "signalStrength": -35,
>    "signalToNoiseRatio": 0
> }
>   ]
> }
>
> This would be for geolocation services such as skyhook or google
> https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geolocation/requests-geolocation
> to allow a device to estimate its location. It seems that what is
> exposed is ESSID information with the strongest AP, or does is this
> information already exposed in iwd and which module/interface should
> be used? If not exposed, which model would be the most appropriate to
> add this to - scan, station, or another - and what interface for dbus
> should the method be exposed through?

Take a look at the ExtendedServiceSet property [1] on the network 
objects. This contains a list of BasicServiceSet object [2] paths. At 
the moment the BasicServiceSet objects only contain the BSSID as this 
was all I really needed for the affinity functionality, but I'm not 
opposed to additional info being added such as signal strength/channel 
etc. If you need any pointers for this let me know, but it should be 
relatively straight forward to add extra properties in the interface 
setup [3].

iwctl also supports showing the BSS object paths/properties via:

"station wlan0 get-bsses"

[1] 
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/network/wireless/iwd.git/tree/doc/network-api.txt#n54
[2] 
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/network/wireless/iwd.git/tree/doc/basic-service-set.txt
[3] 
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/network/wireless/iwd.git/tree/src/network.c#n2196
>
> -Jim
>