From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ivo van Doorn Subject: Re: [PATCH] bcm43xx-d80211: proper implementation of virtual interface support Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 22:55:58 +0200 Message-ID: <200605042256.02333.IvDoorn@gmail.com> References: <200605012135.00895.mb@bu3sch.de> <20060502132037.059a7cb2@griffin.suse.cz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="nextPart3449645.TcGz06YUtC"; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; micalg=pgp-sha1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from nf-out-0910.google.com ([64.233.182.186]:11054 "EHLO nf-out-0910.google.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751175AbWEDVMR (ORCPT ); Thu, 4 May 2006 17:12:17 -0400 Received: by nf-out-0910.google.com with SMTP id m18so248713nfc for ; Thu, 04 May 2006 14:12:16 -0700 (PDT) To: Marcus Better In-Reply-To: Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org --nextPart3449645.TcGz06YUtC Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline On Thursday 4 May 2006 21:26, Marcus Better wrote: > Jiri Benc wrote: > > This is unnecessary. AFAIK bcm43xx hardware doesn't support more than o= ne > > interface at a time (not counting monitor interfaces as those are somew= hat > > special). >=20 > I wonder what exactly is causing this limitation? Why isn't it just a mat= ter > of software support? Hardware limitations probably. For example the Ralink devices. The MAC address must be written into the registers for correct behaviour. When multiple virtual interfaces are going to be used, the device should be working under multiple MAC addresses. While the device could be tricked into doing that (I believe rt61 and rt73 drivers from Rali= nk are making such an attempt) it could give quite some overhead when for each frame that is being send the driver should sort out from which virtual interface it came, write the matching MAC address to the register, and hope that the device will like it when the MAC address is changed so of= ten and the RX is not being affected because of some hardware filter. --nextPart3449645.TcGz06YUtC Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQBEWmpiaqndE37Em0gRAmb1AJ9L5gIU6baytIGCKK9LHL5ASAyb3gCdGPwj nwwxkKpIgV/opfWnfcwYXv8= =AtjK -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --nextPart3449645.TcGz06YUtC--