plan for libertas and mac80211 and cfg80211

plan for libertas and mac80211 and cfg80211

[Cliff Brake]

Hello,

I am using the marvell 8686 in several projects.  Is there any plan to
move the libertas driver to mac80211 in the future?  If not, will
cfg80211 mechanisms be supported with this driver?

Thanks,
Cliff

-- 
=======================
Cliff Brake
http://bec-systems.com

Re: plan for libertas and mac80211 and cfg80211

[Johannes Berg]

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On Wed, 2008-11-05 at 10:28 -0500, Cliff Brake wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am using the marvell 8686 in several projects.  Is there any plan to
> move the libertas driver to mac80211 in the future?  

There's the libertas_tf driver that uses a different firmware, the
libertas driver uses a smarter firmware that's "too smart" to be used
with mac80211.

> If not, will
> cfg80211 mechanisms be supported with this driver?

Depends which mechanisms and who's interested in doing any work on it.

johannes

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Re: plan for libertas and mac80211 and cfg80211

[Dan Williams]

On Wed, 2008-11-05 at 16:52 +0100, Johannes Berg wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-11-05 at 10:28 -0500, Cliff Brake wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I am using the marvell 8686 in several projects.  Is there any plan to
> > move the libertas driver to mac80211 in the future?  
> 
> There's the libertas_tf driver that uses a different firmware, the
> libertas driver uses a smarter firmware that's "too smart" to be used
> with mac80211.

libertas_tf thin firmware is only compatible with usb8388 cards at this
time.

> > If not, will
> > cfg80211 mechanisms be supported with this driver?
> 
> Depends which mechanisms and who's interested in doing any work on it.

Yes, we're interested in porting to cfg80211 and I definitely see that
in the future.

Dan

Re: plan for libertas and mac80211 and cfg80211

[Dan Williams]

On Wed, 2008-11-05 at 10:28 -0500, Cliff Brake wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am using the marvell 8686 in several projects.  Is there any plan to
> move the libertas driver to mac80211 in the future?  If not, will

The libertas parts are "fullmac" parts, and implement most functionality
in firmware.  mac80211 is a "softmac" stack, which implements
functionality on the host CPU.  Thus, it's simply impossible to use
mac80211 with the fullmac libertas parts (838x, 838x).

Furthermore, that would be sort of counter to what the fullmac parts are
supposed to be, which is embedded, power-efficient parts that don't
require much interaction from the host CPU.

> cfg80211 mechanisms be supported with this driver?

Since cfg80211 itself is intended to be independent of mac80211, and
should be able to be used as the configuration interface for all
drivers, be they fullmac or softmac, yes.

Dan