Re: RFC: mac80211/ath9k: allow scanning single channel if other VIF is associated.

[Dan Williams <dcbw@redhat.com>]

On Wed, 2010-09-15 at 00:46 -0500, Dan Williams wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-09-14 at 22:30 -0700, Ben Greear wrote:
> > On 09/14/2010 08:03 PM, Jouni Malinen wrote:
> > > On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 04:14:05PM -0700, Ben Greear wrote:
> > >> This patch aims to decrease channel switching when there is at least one
> > >> interface associated.  This should help multiple station interfaces co-exist
> > >> on the same hardware, especially in WPA mode.
> > >
> > > If I understood the change correctly, it would prevent running full
> > > scans when in associated state. That does not sound reasonable behavior
> > > and scanning should not cause an association to be lost. Did I miss
> > > something or what exactly is this trying to do?
> > 
> > That's pretty much what I'm trying to do.  We had similar code in
> > our 2.6.31 kernel with ath5k. Imagine getting 50 virtual stations
> > started with WPA and all of them trying to scan all channels at once!
> > Most got timeouts, and one scanning would disrupt traffic on the others.
> > And, the hardware can only associate on a single channel anyway, so getting
> > scan results for other channels doesn't do a great deal of good.
> > 
> > With current ath9k, I see DMA timeouts and other nasty things (without
> > that patch applied) when trying to bring up two VIFs with WPA.
> > 
> > I think for the multi-VIF scenario, it should scan the single associated
> > channel by default, but it would be nice to allow full scans on demand.
> > (I would very much like to work with standard wpa_supplicant, but if hacking it
> > is the only way, then I can attempt that.)
> 
> Allowing full scans on demand (ie when userspace requests it) is a must.
> Even in multi-VIF mode.

Obviously I mean "when associated"...

> Dan
> 
> > > If you want to limit scans a single channel in some special use cases,
> > > you should be able to do that in user space, too, at least for the
> > > initial scan before connection. As a future optimization, we should
> > > somehow be able to merge scan requests from multiple VIFs into a single
> > > one, i.e., share the results from a single scan to multiple VIFs..
> > 
> > Merging would be nice.  Maybe store the results in the global hardware/phy
> > structs and just return that to user-space so long as it's relatively fresh?
> > 
> > > It would be easier to comment on the changes if you were to inline them
> > > instead of attaching the file..
> > 
> > Sorry about that..I'll inline it next time.  It will probably be white-space
> > damaged, but I can re-send any official patches using git.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Ben
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
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