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

[Solomon Peachy <pizza@shaftnet.org>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1609 bytes --]

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.

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
-- 
Solomon Peachy        		       pizza at shaftnet dot org
Delray Beach, FL                          ^^ (email/xmpp) ^^
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 190 bytes --]