From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Joseph Jezak Subject: Re: Broadcom 43xx first results Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 13:38:37 -0500 Message-ID: <4394892D.2090100@gentoo.org> References: <20051205190038.04b7b7c1@griffin.suse.cz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: mbuesch-KuiJ5kEpwI6ELgA04lAiVw@public.gmane.org, linux-kernel-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org, bcm43xx-dev-0fE9KPoRgkgATYTw5x5z8w@public.gmane.org, NetDev Return-path: To: Jiri Benc In-Reply-To: <20051205190038.04b7b7c1-IhiK2ZEFs2oCVLCxKZUutA@public.gmane.org> Sender: bcm43xx-dev-admin-tdrK/OAtAx2ELgA04lAiVw@public.gmane.org Errors-To: bcm43xx-dev-admin-tdrK/OAtAx2ELgA04lAiVw@public.gmane.org List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org > Why yet another attempt to write 802.11 stack? Sure, the one currently > in the kernel is unusable and everybody knows about it. But why not to > improve code opensourced by Devicescape some time ago instead of > inventing the wheel again and again? Yes, I know that code is not > perfect and needs a lot of work, but it is the best piece of code we > have available now. And it _does_ support WPA and such - in fact, it > is nearly complete. > > Please take a look at http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/jbenc/ We're not writing an entire stack. We're writing a layer that sits in between the current ieee80211 stack that's already present in the kernel and drivers that do not have a hardware MAC. Since ieee80211 is already in use in the kernel today, this seemed like a natural and useful extension to the existing code. I agree that it's somewhat wasteful to keep rewriting 802.11 stacks and we considered other options, but it seemed like a more logical choice to work with what was available and recommended than to use an external stack. -Joe