Does mac80211 support ap mode

Does mac80211 support ap mode

[cao jing]

Hi,

I read the mac80211 code. I found only the STA, IBSS and Mesh_Point
interface type are processed by the code. So does it support the ap
mode.

Jing

Re: Does mac80211 support ap mode

[Dan Williams]

On Mon, 2008-04-14 at 15:18 -0400, cao jing wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I read the mac80211 code. I found only the STA, IBSS and Mesh_Point
> interface type are processed by the code. So does it support the ap
> mode.

Yes, it does.  I'd suggest using hostapd as your AP daemon and the
nl80211 hostap driver.  While it's still under pretty heavy development,
it all should be fairly usable.  Johannes Berg would probably have a
more up-to-date description of the status of the hostapd nl80211 driver
and mac80211 AP-mode support.

Dan

Re: Does mac80211 support ap mode

[Johannes Berg]

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> > I read the mac80211 code. I found only the STA, IBSS and Mesh_Point
> > interface type are processed by the code. So does it support the ap
> > mode.
> 
> Yes, it does.  I'd suggest using hostapd as your AP daemon and the
> nl80211 hostap driver.  While it's still under pretty heavy development,
> it all should be fairly usable.  Johannes Berg would probably have a
> more up-to-date description of the status of the hostapd nl80211 driver
> and mac80211 AP-mode support.

Yes, AP mode is supported, however, you need patches (see
http://johannes.sipsolutions.net/patches/kernel/all/LATEST/series for a
note on it)

The reason for the patches is that while it work, there are a number of
problems:
 * depending on configuration, it may not be IEEE 802.11 compliant
   (this is related to basic rate set and similar things)
 * there may be inefficiencies with the frame handling
 * probably more I'm not thinking of right now

johannes

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Re: Does mac80211 support ap mode

[Johannes Berg]

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> > I read the mac80211 code. I found only the STA, IBSS and Mesh_Point
> > interface type are processed by the code. So does it support the ap
> > mode.
> 
> Yes, it does.  I'd suggest using hostapd as your AP daemon and the
> nl80211 hostap driver.  While it's still under pretty heavy development,
> it all should be fairly usable.  Johannes Berg would probably have a
> more up-to-date description of the status of the hostapd nl80211 driver
> and mac80211 AP-mode support.

As for drivers, b43 is known to work (I test this), rt2500pci seems to
have some trouble (Bas Hulsken was trying it) and I don't know about any
others.

johannes

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Re: Does mac80211 support ap mode

[Zhu Yi]

On Tue, 2008-04-15 at 13:03 +0200, Johannes Berg wrote:
> As for drivers, b43 is known to work (I test this), rt2500pci seems to
> have some trouble (Bas Hulsken was trying it) and I don't know about
> any others.

iwl4965 is working. Patches are coming.

Thanks,
-yi

Re: Does mac80211 support ap mode

[Bas Hulsken]

On Tue, 2008-04-15 at 13:03 +0200, Johannes Berg wrote:
> > > I read the mac80211 code. I found only the STA, IBSS and Mesh_Point
> > > interface type are processed by the code. So does it support the ap
> > > mode.
> > 
> > Yes, it does.  I'd suggest using hostapd as your AP daemon and the
> > nl80211 hostap driver.  While it's still under pretty heavy development,
> > it all should be fairly usable.  Johannes Berg would probably have a
> > more up-to-date description of the status of the hostapd nl80211 driver
> > and mac80211 AP-mode support.
> 
> As for drivers, b43 is known to work (I test this), rt2500pci seems to
> have some trouble (Bas Hulsken was trying it) and I don't know about any
> others.

I have tested AP mode on rt2500pci and rtl8187, both don't work at the
moment.

rt2500pci works best, but hangs somewhere in the
handshake/authentication process (I've posted logs on this list). I did
manage to get it to work beginning of Feb. this year, I'm still trying
to find the regression. Unfortunately the rt2x00 code has changed a lot
since then, and I'm extremely busy at work, so I haven't made a lot of
progress there.

rtl8187 does not come very far at all, hostapd can't switch it to master
mode apparently.. haven't investigated very much why this happens
though.. so it might be something trivial.

Bas

Re: Does mac80211 support ap mode

[Johannes Berg]

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Hi Bas,

Thanks for the note.

> rtl8187 does not come very far at all, hostapd can't switch it to master
> mode apparently.. haven't investigated very much why this happens
> though.. so it might be something trivial.

That would probably be the driver not being prepared to handle beaconing
etc. and thus rejecting AP mode interfaces in its add_interface()
callback.

johannes

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