Re: 3945 driver using d80211

[Michael Wu <flamingice@sourmilk.net>]

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On Wednesday 09 August 2006 00:57, Johannes Berg wrote:
> Please not, for now. We need someone pushing for fullmac features in
> d80211, we need those anyway for embedded systems that can't afford
> running all of it on the main CPU. While obviously Intel would benefit
> from doing this since a lot more d80211 features would come available,
> the greater good would be having a main-stream card that someone cares
> about and helps making d80211 full-mac capable.
>
It's not that hard to generate probe, authentication, and association frames, 
and it isn't done frequently enough to stress any embedded system that can 
run linux. Doing this would let 3945 take advantage of all the d80211 
features, so why not?

What level of fullmac support are we talking about? True fullmac cards (as I 
define them) do not need to use d80211. WE19 is all they need, to add 
WPA/WPA2 support. The IPW cards have a particularly unique split between 
firmware and host 802.11 duties which I haven't seen in any other cards. They 
aren't quite fullmac enough to interface with WE directly, yet they only need 
probe response handling to complete the picture. What other half-fullmac, 
half-softmac card besides the other IPW cards splits card/host 802.11 duties 
along those lines? What other splits between card and host are out there? I 
would be very reluctant to make changes to the 802.11 stack to support 
"fullmac" without evidence that other drivers need the change.

-Michael Wu

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