Re: [PATCH wireless-next v1 1/4] wifi: nl80211: rename PROBE_CLIENT to PROBE_PEER and add STA-side probing support

[Priyansha Tiwari <priyansha.tiwari@oss.qualcomm.com>]

On 4/15/2026 3:23 PM, Johannes Berg wrote:
> On Wed, 2026-04-15 at 15:13 +0530, Priyansha Tiwari wrote:
>> From: Priyansha Tiwari <priyansha.tiwari@oss.qualcomm.com>
>>
>> Rename NL80211_CMD_PROBE_CLIENT to NL80211_CMD_PROBE_PEER to generalize
>> peer probing, AP/GO continue to probe associated STAs (legacy PROBE_CLIENT
>> behavior) while, when the driver advertises NL80211_EXT_FEATURE_PROBE_AP,
>> a STA/P2P-client may probe its currently associated AP to quickly verify link
>> responsiveness without waiting for traffic or long timeouts.
> Why though? Link management etc. is totally up to the driver/mac80211...
>
> Also I'm sure this isn't going to work for all devices, e.g. Intel
> devices can't send NDPs from the host (this is probably wrong in the
> iwlmld driver for AP side though.)
>
> johannes
The intent is not link management, it is to let userspace explicitly 
verify AP reachability on demand, without waiting for mac80211's 
internal probe timer.

No change has been made to the AP/GO side.

The NL80211_EXT_FEATURE_PROBE_AP flag gates this feature: only drivers 
that can handle host-initiated nullfunc frames in STA mode will 
advertise it.
Drivers like iwlmld that handle this in firmware would not set the flag, 
so userspace would not use the feature on those devices.