Re: future of prism2_usb (aka wlan-ng) in staging tree

[Dan Williams <dcbw@redhat.com>]

On Thu, 2013-11-07 at 18:02 -0500, Solomon Peachy wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 07, 2013 at 04:25:00PM -0600, Dan Williams wrote:
> > > At this point it's a more modern driver than the ones already in the 
> > > kernel, and I'm willing to maintain it if there's a point to doing so.
> > 
> > What's the delta in device support between prism2_usb and the hostap
> > driver's USB subdriver?  Is there any overlap?
> 
> Given that there never was a hostap_usb, there's no overlap at all.  If 
> you have a prism2.5/3 USB widget, you'll need prism2_usb to make it more 
> than a lousy paperweight.

Sorry, I see now I meant orinico_usb, not hostap...

Dan

> Way back in the day I'd advocated for doing a USB port of hostap rather 
> than mainlining prism2_usb, strictly on a ROI basis, but the boots on 
> the ground chose the latter.  Given that prism2_usb has slowly been 
> improved since then and hostap has largely been ignored, IMO the right 
> thing here is to get it out of staging by taking care of any outstanding 
> problems.
> 
> On a strict feature basis, hostap has the advantage of supporting AP 
> operation and WPA -- For the latter, prism2_usb just needs the cfg80211 
> and crypto layer hooks since it needs to be handled in software anyway.  
> As for AP operation -- Intersil never officially supported AP mode on 
> the USB devices, and while it worked unofficially, it wasn't terribly 
> stable.  The same stabilitiy problems plagued monitor operation; my 
> theory at the time was that their USB "glue" silicon simply couldn't 
> keep up with the load.
> 
>  - Solomon