Re: [RFC] Introduce NL80211_IFTYPE_MLO_LINK_DEVICE for MLO link (IEEE 802.11be)

[usdutt@codeaurora.org]

Hi ,
Thanks for your response.

>> The switch / change interface among the STA or MLO Link shall happen
>> only in the disconnected state.
>> At this point, (in the disconnected state) these MLO Link wdev’s are 
>> not
>> linked to the STA interface ( either on the same / different wiphy ).
>> These shall be linked after the Association to an MLO AP.
>> The intention here is to have the wdev in the right mode ( STA or MLO
>> Link ) before the connect / Association is triggered.
>> This wdev is put in to a MLO_LINK_DEVICE, before the connect /
>> association is triggered on the respective MLD (IFTYPE_STA) interface
>> for an MLO connection.
>> This wdev is put in the IFTYPE_STA mode, before triggering a connect /
>> association on this interface.
>> 
>> This should be applicable for different drivers too.
>> 
>> Please let us know if there are any caveats in this design
> 
> 
> Just to summarize, to see if I'm understanding it correctly.
> 
> You're basically saying that on the client side
> 
>  1) the NL80211_IFTYPE_STATION interfaces becomes the MLD with whatever
>     MAC address it may have, and does not maintain its "own" 
> association
>     to an AP;
>  2) instead, a number of NL80211_IFTYPE_MLO_LINK (let's drop the DEVICE
>     it's long enough) are added to it, with appropriate link addresses
>     selected for them;
>  3) this configuration can only happen while none of them are 
> connected.
> 
> Right?

No . Our intention was the NL80211_IFTYPE_STATION interface to also 
represent
the MLD + MLO Link while the NL80211_IFTYPE_MLO_LINK wdevs represents 
other MLO
Links of an MLO connection.
This MLO_LINK wdev will not have its netdev. The IFTYPE_STATION wdev 
shall
link all such MLO_LINK’s which are part of the same MLD connection.
That way , there will be a single netdev interface exposed to the 
applications
for the data transfer and these MLO_LINK wdevs along with 
NL80211_IFTYPE_STATION
wdev represent the corresponding connection/link status with the MLD AP.
Please note that in this case the  NL80211_IFTYPE_STATION Acts as both 
the MLD
and one of the MLO Link’s.

> 
> Wrt. MAC addresses, I suppose from our pure software POV the _MLO_LINK
> could share a MAC address with the MLD (_STATION), although I hear that
> there's still a discussion right now on MLD-addressed and 
> link-addressed
> management frames, so I think we need to wait until we know that for
> sure.
> 
> A couple of questions:
> 
>  1) How do we present this to userspace, is that it? Wouldn't the
>     _STATION (MLD) interface ideally still have *some* visible wireless
>     state, and show which network it's connected to? It might be very
>     awkward to require all userspace tools to be updated to know about
>     and query for _MLO_LINKs.
> 
>     Obviously, wpa_supplicant needs to be aware of these and can handle
>     it just fine, so I'm more concerned about other userspace. After
>     all, people still use tools built on wireless extensions

As I have mentioned above , the _STATION is both the MLD and one of the
MLO Links.
This shall still have the connected state with its MLO Link representing
the connection info with the AP.
The other MLO Link of a 2 Link MLO connection to the AP (for example) is
represented by the _MLO_LINK wdev.
Userspace tools can still see this _STATION as both the MLD and non MLD
station interface connection.
For an MLD connection this _STATION interface will also link with the
corresponding _MLO_LINK wdev’s and thus any
MLO aware user applications can as well get the connection stats of the
corresponding MLO Links along with _STATION link through the _STATION 
interface.

> 
>  2) In some ways related to 1), but in other ways also not - perhaps we
>     need to anticipate that some devices will want to handle MLO link
>     decisions in firmware? I haven't thought about this much at all, 
> but
>     if we require separate MLO_LINK type wdevs for each link that might
>     be tricky?

Are you saying that these devices want to totally handle the MLO link
establishments with in the firmware ?
Let me take an example here.  I have taken a 2 link MLO for a reference.
Such devices want to still represent the station interface with
NL80211_IFTYPE_STATION to the cfg80211 and create multiple links with in
the firmware ?
Technically, the _STATION interface here is connected to 2 BSSID’s .
Can I know What would _STATION(wdev)->current_bss represent here ?


>  3) I keep thinking about moving much "associated" state into the STA
>     struct we maintain in the kernel, and actually maintaining the
>     *links* only as "multiple associations". This also gets tricky with
>     the link MAC addresses in a way, though that could be handled. It
>     might also be an easier way to manage some of that state problem
>     from my question 1)?
> 
>     Any thoughts on this? I'm definitely not saying this would be easy,
>     but would it simplify things regarding the userspace APIs and the
>     offload question in 2)?

Can I know how these “multiple associations” would be represented as to
the user space ?
With your proposal above, the userspace applications shall still see a
single NL80211_IFTYPE_STATION and multiple links are maintained within 
this
wdev ?
Fine , this would work as long as these links are with in the same 
wiphy.

Let me present the two use cases we considered MLO for.

1)single wiphy to represent multiple bands on which the MLO Links can be 
formed :
In this case the _STATION interface would be on a single wiphy and yeah 
your
proposal would hold good. We initially thought on similar lines. Thanks.
2) single wiphy for each supported band: Say there are two wiphy’s here 
, each
representing the respective bands 2G and 5G/6G. In this specific case, 
the non
MLO solution had two _STATION interfaces connecting to the AP’s on 
respective bands.

We are aiming to enhance this design for MLO . In this case, the MLO 
Links spawn
across different wiphy’s and at the same time has to be backward 
compatible for
the non MLO connection ( dual STA ) .
To suite the above two use cases , we proposed the introduction of 
_MLO_LINK wdev
and the _STATION interface to link all the _MLO_LINK wdev’s that are 
part of the
respective MLD connection.
Thus, a _STATION wdev can be changed to the _MLO_LINK wdev and vice 
versa to have
both the MLO and non MLO connection (Dual STA).

>     Any other designs than the MLO_LINK wdev that you have considered
>     and discarded, and if so for which reasons?
> 
> 
>> The wdev - NL80211_IFTYPE_MLO_LINK_DEVICE only represents a “MLO Link”
>> on the non-AP MLD.This would not be required for an AP MLO.
> 
> FWIW, I don't buy the part about this not being required for an AP MLD.
> 
>> The following explains our design for AP.
>> For AP , NL80211_IFTYPE_AP wdev shall represent both –  AP instance 
>> for
>> non-MLO / legacy client and an MLO link for AP-MLD.
>> To be specific, For a 2 link AP MLD , there will be 2  
>> NL80211_IFTYPE_AP
>> wdev's created.
> 
> This will not work if there's a need (and possibly spec requirement) to
> have an MLD address that's different from *all* the link addresses. It
> will also be difficult to manage that one of the AP interfaces would
> have to be defacto the MLD, but (at least in theory) any one of the AP
> interfaces could be removed for 'degraded' operation.
> 
> I suspect will also not work right if you want to have AP_VLAN on the 
> AP
> MLD.
> 
> IMHO it'd be better for things to be symmetric like you suggest for the
> client side.
> 
> Now, I can see the need for legacy interoperability, but then it seems
> it would probably be better to do this the other way around and declare
> a new AP_MLD interface type (with a netdev) that doesn't maintain its
> own beacons etc. but just has its own MAC address (the AP MLD address)
> and bubbles up the data frames exchanged on the MLD.

OK.  A new AP_MLD with a netdev to represent the MLD. I guess this is to
only facilitate the need for a different MLD address over the MLO link 
addresses?

Taking an example , A 2 MLO AP would have the following . Please correct 
me .
Two _ IFTYPE_AP wdev’s , representing a Link for an MLD AP and an AP 
instance
for a non MLD AP ( for the legacy clients to connect ). These two wdev’s 
maintain
their own beacon’s and do have the corresponding netdev’s.
A new AP_MLD with it’s own netdev but doesn’t maintain it’s beacon. The 
two
_IFTYPE_AP wdev’s, representing the link shall point to this AP_MLD 
interface
for the MLD address ?

We had seen some concerns on this model and please allow me to get back 
to you
as early as possible.

Regards,
Sunil