Re: [PATCH] mac80211: report operating frequency rather than current

[Kalle Valo <kalle.valo@iki.fi>]

"John W. Linville" <linville@tuxdriver.com> writes:

>> Yes, and at what point does it seem like a good idea to hide the channel  
>> the wifi card is on?  If I set channel 11 and it is scanning instead of  
>> locked on channel 11 then I should see the current channel the hardware  
>> is on.  This seems like an aweful idea to me, granted, it may help a few  
>> people that don't understand how scanning works, but hiding the truth is  
>> never a good idea. NACK.
>
> I can see what you mean, but I think showing seemingly random
> fluctuations in channel assignments is at best distracting.  Don't you
> agree that most people are more interested in seeing the configuration
> state than the transient state of the hardware?

I agree, it's very distracting. And while doing mac80211 software scan
the device is on a channel approximately 30 ms with queues stopped, so
no data is transfered at that time. I don't see any benefit from
reporting this value to user space: "Hey, I'm on channel 5 now but by
the time to you read this I will be on channel 6 already."

If people want to follow how mac80211 changes the frequency during scan,
the proper way is to add debug messages for op_config() calls. I saw
that Johannes was already working on that.

-- 
Kalle Valo