Re: [Madwifi-devel] Survey: What are you using MadWifi for, and why?

[Felix Fietkau <nbd@openwrt.org>]

David Acker wrote:
> Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 1:44 PM, David Acker <dacker@roinet.com> wrote:
>>> It is a non-802.11s protocol that predates 802.11s development by quite
>>> awhile.  It runs over WDS links.  In theory it could run over anything that
>>> supports dynamic creation and destruction of WDS links.
>> 
>> So its a some sort of MadWifi-only hack?
> 
> Not at all.  The algorithm runs in user space and has run over other 
> radio/driver combinations and even in networks of mixed radio types.  I 
> don't see a problem with running it over ath5k.  Basic functionality 
> should work fine.
> 
> The problem with switching to ath5k would be the loss of performance 
> related features (compression, fast frames, turbo), and some required 
> features (half/quarter rates are required for some channels on some 
> radios).  Also, I don't know if ath5k will work on products based on 
> Atheros WiSOCs like Ubiquiti's PicoStation and Bullet.
I have some work in progress patches for that. They won't work yet (in
fact I just ported them to a newer version of compat-wireless without
testing, so they probably won't even compile yet *g*), but according to
my rough estimation, they contain about 70-80% of what's necessary to
support this hw. You can find them at http://nbd.name/ath5k-wisoc.tar.gz
If anybody is seriously interested in hacking on this stuff, please take
a look at this patch series and contact me afterwards...

> A lesser issue 
> (more of a pain for me than an ath5k issue) is that I have some 
> platforms that use an older kernel and moving up to a newer kernel will 
> have to be done without hardware vendor support.
What platforms with old kernels are you using? Maybe some of them are
being worked on in OpenWrt already ;)

- Felix