Wireless Network Maintainer?

Wireless Network Maintainer?

[Nico Schottelius]

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Hello!

Is there _anyone_ responsable for the wireless (802.11*) drivers in the
Linux kernel?

I would like to have the following things (if possible) for all wireless
drivers:

   - easy interface = support for wireless tools
   - compatibility with 2.5/2.6 modul interface
   - support for AP-Master/AP/Ad-Hoc/Monitor Modus (like HostAP can do)
   - device naming scheme should be wlanX -> easier to see what it is
   - support for external encryption (kernel modules/user space) like WLSec

Have a nice day,

Nico

P.S.: Sorry for the crosspost!

-- 
quote:   there are two time a day you should do nothing: before 12 and after 12
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url:     http://nerd-hosting.net - domains for nerds (from a nerd)

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Re: Wireless Network Maintainer?

[Jean Tourrilhes]

Nico Schottelius wrote :
> 
> Is there _anyone_ responsable for the wireless (802.11*) drivers in the
> Linux kernel?

	Yes, the individual driver authors. Either check the names in
the source code or check my Howto.

>    - easy interface = support for wireless tools

	Can't agree me, but I'm biased. This is slowly improving.

>    - compatibility with 2.5/2.6 modul interface

	Wireless drivers included in kernel 2.6.X are already compatible.

>    - support for AP-Master/AP/Ad-Hoc/Monitor Modus (like HostAP can do)

	There is two aspect there.
	First, I want the HostAP driver to be included in 2.6.X, and
I'm trying to make this happen.
	Second, Master and Monitor mode can be implemented only in
drivers for which the necessary hardware documentation is available,
which means only a subset of them.

>   - device naming scheme should be wlanX -> easier to see what it is

	There are pros and cons to that. Personally I prefer the
approach taken by the aironet driver (ethX + wifiX). The interface the
driver present to the kernel is *really* an Ethernet interface.
	If you really want easy identification, we could take the *BSD
approach where every driver use it's own unique device name.

>   - support for external encryption (kernel modules/user space) like WLSec

	Let's not reinvent the wheel again. What's wrong with IPsec ?
If you want to go that route, at least follow one of the upcomming
standard (802.1x, WPA, ...).

	Jean

Re: Wireless Network Maintainer?

[Toon van der Pas]

On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 05:55:48PM -0700, Jean Tourrilhes wrote:
> Nico Schottelius wrote :
> > 
> >   - device naming scheme should be wlanX -> easier to see what it is
> 
> There are pros and cons to that. Personally I prefer the approach
> taken by the aironet driver (ethX + wifiX). The interface the
> driver present to the kernel is *really* an Ethernet interface.
> If you really want easy identification, we could take the *BSD
> approach where every driver use it's own unique device name.

Please don't do that. Leave it as it is.
If somebody is not happy with the ethX names, use the nameif utility
to change them into more descriptive names. I've successfully done that
on my firewall machine. It looks like this:

# ifconfig -a|grep "Link encap"|awk '{print $1}'
dmz
lo
loc
net

The nameif utility also is the right tool to link a device name
to an ethernet hardware (MAC) address, so you'll never run into
surprises again. Check out my cute little table:

# cat /etc/mactab
loc 00:40:F4:47:EA:65
dmz 00:40:F4:47:EA:64
net 00:40:F4:47:EA:63

And hey, it's all done in userspace, the holy grail!  :-)

Regards,
Toon.