From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>
Subject: Re: Prism54 WPA Support - wpa_supplicant - Linux general wpa support
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 2004 00:06:35 -0400
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References: <20040602071449.GJ10723@ruslug.rutgers.edu> <20040602132313.GB7341@jm.kir.nu>
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Cc: "Luis R. Rodriguez" <mcgrof@studorgs.rutgers.edu>,
	Netdev <netdev@oss.sgi.com>, hostap@shmoo.com,
	prism54-devel@prism54.org, Jean Tourrilhes <jt@bougret.hpl.hp.com>,
	Linux Kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
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To: Jouni Malinen <jkmaline@cc.hut.fi>
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Jouni Malinen wrote:
> The first thing I would like to see is an addition to  Linux wireless
> extensions for WPA/WPA2 so that we can get rid of the private ioctls in
> the drivers. Even though these can often be similar, it would be nice to
> just write one driver interface code in wpa_supplicant and have it
> working with all Linu drivers.. I hope to find some time to write a
> proposal for this.


One of the things that is nice about wireless-2.6 is that is affords the 
opportunity to totally rethink the wireless extensions.

Although a lot of people would howl, since HostAP is essentially new 
code from the mainline kernel perspective, a new userland API (and new 
or updated tools) could come along with it.

I have mentioned in the past (no offense Jean!) that I do not like the 
overly-generic wireless handler structure.  It is less type-safe than is 
generally preferred in Linux, IMO.

A low-level wireless driver should not implement ioctls, it should 
implement callbacks in some sort of 'struct wireless_operations' as is 
done in other kernel subsystems.

ioctl details should be hidden from low-level drivers as much as 
possible, through type-safe interfaces.  Strive to make both the 
wireless driver API and the wireless userland API easy to change and 
evolve over time.

	Jeff