Re: [RFC 0/4] Allow live MAC address change

[Denis Kenzior <denkenz@gmail.com>]

Hi Kalle,

> For user experience scanning and DHCP are also important, what kind of > numbers you get when those are included? No need to have anything> 
precise, I would like just to get an understanding where we are> nowadays.

Scanning heavily depends on the RF environment and the hardware.  In our 
testing ath9k takes stupid long to scan for example.

But in a sort of best case scenario, using limited scan and no mac 
change, iwd connects in ~300ms.  People have reported that they have not 
finished opening their laptop screen and they're connected, so at that 
level of latency, every millisecond is important and totally worth 
fighting for.  Randomizing the MAC would penalize our connection times 
by 2X (300 ms at least).  And Android folks have reported the penalty to 
be as high as 3 seconds.  So this needs to be fixed.  And do note that 
this is a feature every modern OS implements by default.

> 
> As you only provided one number it's clear that you are only working
> with one driver. But for us it's not that simple, we have to support a

Please don't jump to conclusions like you seem to be doing here.  James 
gave you one number that is pretty typical.  If you want us to provide 
numbers for other drivers under given conditions, just ask.  We have a 
framework for timing these.

> myriad of different types of hardware and there can be complications and
> additions later on, even for simple features. Like the dynamic power
> save support I submitted to mac80211 over 10 years which was supposed to
> be simple, and still we talk almost every year how do we get it out of
> mac80211 as it makes maintenance difficult.
> 

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here?

Regards,
-Denis