From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jeff Garzik Subject: Re: linux-wireless mailing list Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2004 22:08:17 -0500 Sender: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com Message-ID: <40469DA1.9090502@pobox.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Jean Tourrilhes , Netdev Return-path: To: Pavel Roskin In-Reply-To: Errors-to: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org Pavel Roskin wrote: > Hello! > > I believe the developers of Linux wireless drivers need a separate mailing > list, preferably called linux-wireless at vger.kernel.org. I don't expect > it to have heavy traffic, but there should be a definitive forum for > discussing issues common for wireless drivers on Linux. I do not object to such a list, but I would respectfully request that all development matters be cross-posted to netdev@oss.sgi.com. That's where the network developers hang out. Now I present my opinions :) > I expect following topics to be discussed: > > Wireless Extensions. I highly respect Jean Tourrilhes who is doing this > work. I believe that driver and userspace developers should use this > forum to discuss their needs and to provide feedback to Jean. The wireless extensions are utility -- they work, but are not beautiful. I am presently writing the driver for the RealTek wireless card, and in the process creating a small wireless driver API. The ideal is to avoid ioctls, and instead to present extensible, type-safe interfaces. This is what I would like wireless extensions to morph into. > Handling of 802.11 frames. We may need common code to convert 802.11 > frames to 802.3 and possibly other standards. Maybe some standards for > 802.11 encapsulation and bridging could be discussed as well. Absolutely. David Miller, Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo, and myself all seem to feel that a net/802_11 directory and associated code would be useful. There is definitely an area for code commonality across drivers. > Sniffing. We need a common standard how to pass raw frames and additional > information to the userspace. There are several de facto standards, but > the lack of communication between developers makes those standards less > useful. For example, Prism2 headers were meant as highly extensible, but > libpcap expects them to be of fixed size. It's an obvious failure to > communicate the intentions of the standard. Agreed. > Encryption. There are wireless specific encryption issues. Host based > WEP support needs RC4 cipher in the kernel. There's not much to discuss > here, but the lack of RC4 in the kernel may indicate that Linux wireless > developers are not acting together to make it happen. The patch does > exist. Send the patch to netdev! ;-) This should be the easy part. > Other interfaces between drivers and the userspace. There should be one > place to discuss whether wireless drivers should be using > netif_carrier_on/off, ethtool and mii-tool support. Again, there is not > much to discuss, but it's much much worse if the same questions are > discussed in different forums and every driver takes its own approach. netdev is that place ;-) Best regards and welcome, Jeff