IEEE 802.11w support/compliance in TI-1251 (wl1251)

IEEE 802.11w support/compliance in TI-1251 (wl1251)

[Michael Zintakis]

All,

I hope this is the right place to post my query (below), apologies, if 
not. I did try TI's own "support" forum (E2E) as well as emailing TI 
support directly a couple of times, but, let just say that I didn't 
exactly have the best of luck with them...

I have an old-ish smartphone using the above wireless chip and I am 
trying to configure it to use MFP (Management Frame Protection), but I 
am not having much success with this. The smartphone uses TI-s own 
driver (I think it is v4.x of WiLink - the kernel object is called 
wlan.ko, the interface is named tiwlan0).

After banging my head against the wall - multiple times - it was 
suggested to me that this driver may not have support for MFP (IEEE 
802.11w).

I have "forced" MFP on the AP side via ieee80211w=2 (mandatory) and when 
I configure supplicant's configuration file (wpa_supplicant.conf) to get 
into this mode by including "ieee80211w=2" within the network segment of 
that file, on the AP side I get the following error message: "Management 
frame protection required, but client did not enable it".

After several unsuccessful attempts to enforce this option and getting 
in touch with the wpa_supplicant/hostapd software author, I have been 
told that either TI's own driver or the TI-1251 hardware device may not 
have support for this.

Could anyone more experienced/knowledgeable clarify this for me please - 
is there any way I could enforce this and deploy MFP or am I doomed to 
failure?

I am also not completely clear whether I may have more luck if I replace 
the TI's own WiLink driver with the "standard" wireless driver (I 
haven't yet tried to do that, don't know whether this is possible 
either) - provided the WiLink driver does not support MFP.

Thanks in advance for any help!


MZ

Re: IEEE 802.11w support/compliance in TI-1251 (wl1251)

[Mr Dash Four]

> Thanks in advance for any help!
Hehe, another one...

Someone from TI will be along shortly to let you know that <insert name 
of random TI engineer/developer> is having mental breakdown/couldn't be 
arsed replying (delete as appropriate) and to also thank you for your 
patience! You are more likely to get a response from Bill Gates on a 
Linux support question than have somebody from TI deal with your 
particular query.

FWIW, I don't think MFP is supported in Wilink, maybe it is on wl1251 
(the linux-wireless driver), but I couldn't manage to get that driver to 
work on Android. I also had the driver supplied by TI and wanted to 
replace it for different reasons - if you look at the archives of this 
ML you may find why that is. I ended up completely replacing my device 
which doesn't have anything related to Texas Instruments (at least not 
in terms of wireless anyway) and I am much happier that way - staying as 
far as possible from having to deal with a bunch of lazy, uninterested 
and self-indulgent "developers" from that company is not anything I'd 
recommend to anyone.

In any case, I am hoping your experience is a bit different and wish you 
good luck!