Re: [PATCH wireless-next 3/3] wifi: mac80211_hwsim: Advertise support for IEEE 802.1X authentication protocol

[Kavita Kavita <kavita.kavita@oss.qualcomm.com>]

On 2/26/2026 2:06 PM, Johannes Berg wrote:
> On Thu, 2026-02-26 at 12:24 +0530, Kavita Kavita wrote:
>> Advertise support for the IEEE 802.1X authentication protocol in
>> mac80211_hwsim to enable testing scenarios.
> 
> Do we even need this in drivers vs. mac80211 just setting it?
> 
> All the code for it is in mac80211, so it shouldn't matter?
> 
> I'd actually argue NL80211_EXT_FEATURE_EPPKE is the same, mac80211
> should set it instead of the driver (I didn't merge [1] yet anyway) and
> only NL80211_EXT_FEATURE_ASSOC_FRAME_ENCRYPTION should be in the driver?


For (Re)Association frame encryption, additional changes are required in the
driver and firmware. Because of this dependency, we initially thought it was
best to let the driver set the EPPKE and IEEE 802.1X Authentication feature
flags as well.
However, since no lower-layer changes are actually needed for EPPKE and
IEEE 802.1X Authentication, these can safely be advertised directly in mac80211.
The driver should only set the (Re)Association frame encryption feature flag,
and mac80211 can then conditionally enable the EPPKE and IEEE 802.1X Authentication
feature flags based on that indication. 

I will send the updated patch set with these changes. Thank you.


> 
> 
> [1] https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-wireless/patch/20260114111900.2196941-10-kavita.kavita@oss.qualcomm.com/
> 
> johannes