Re: on radio_enabled

["Gábor Stefanik" <netrolller.3d@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 12:39 AM, Johannes Berg
<johannes@sipsolutions.net> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> So I was looking through various drivers, and not all of them are abl=
e
> to handle radio_enabled gracefully.
>
> iwlwifi, for instance, turns off the radio but then is unable to fulf=
il
> any configuration requests coming in while the radio is disabled.
>
> The same is true, if I remember correctly what Ivo told me, for rt2x0=
0.
>
> It is not true for b43/legacy, for example, which leaves the MAC runn=
ing
> and thus can configure everything even if the radio is disabled.
> Similarly for Atheros hw, I think.
>
> Now, if we're going to use radio_enabled more, I wonder whether we
> should completely deconfigure the hardware when we want to turn off
> radio_enabled, and then completely reconfigure it once we enable the
> radio again.
>
> Pros:
> =A0* configures all hardware correctly without the driver needing to =
do
> =A0 everything by itself
> =A0* works with all hardware for sure
>
> Cons:
> =A0* higher latency
>
> Also, sometimes we may want to disable the radio for just short perio=
ds
> of time, I think, for regulatory compliance? 11h or so? How's that
> handled, or rather supposed to be?
>
> johannes
>

In my opinion, the driver should be able to specify whether it can
handle configuration-while-down correctly or not. Drivers that don't
report as being able to do this should be configuration-cycled.

--G=E1bor

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Vista: [V]iruses, [I]ntruders, [S]pyware, [T]rojans and [A]dware. :-)
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