Re: [RFC PATCH v2 0/8] Adding NO_STA flag and reworking RX link resolution

[Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>]

On Mon, 2026-04-27 at 15:32 +0530, Ramasamy Kaliappan wrote:
> 
> To simplify this handling, we would like to explore an alternative 
> approach that avoids address translation for management frames 
> (authentication, association, and reassociation),
> regardless of whether the STA already exists.

I'm not convinced that making one specific case a little bit easier is
worth the trade-off for making *all* (other) cases handle link addresses
throughout the entire wifi stack.

> However, this approach may introduce backward compatibility concerns
> when either the driver or hostapd is not updated.
> To address this, we propose introducing a capability indication
> mechanism between the driver and user space (driver ↔ hostapd).

Even assuming we make the (IMHO misleading) effort of not translating
and having it handled throughout the stack, this also can't really work,
unless we suddenly start translating (or not) for each individual
application that may be using action frame registration _separately_.

I don't believe this approach makes more sense than translating and
sorting out the corner cases.

johannes