Re: [Madwifi-users] Regulatory Domain -- Safe
Status: Beta
Brought to you by:
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From: Alfred A. <al...@cc...> - 2004-03-10 15:06:53
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Hi, >Just a question... maybe madwifi could use the country setting (and the >supported channel element) if a accesspoint provides it in his beacon ? > >I 've seen, Lancom does something in this way in his Windows driver. Our APs put in fact the 802.11d info element into the beacons and probe responses. I'm however quite sure that the Windows client drivers we currently ship make no use of it; the channel ranges are deduced from the country setting the user makes. While the 11d info element is in theory a good idea, it means in practice that a client that relies on this information has absolutely no idea about allowed channel ranges and transmit power before it has seen the first beacon from the AP, which means it can only scan passively. Passive scanning is however slower than sending probe requests, and the 'closed network' feature some magazine testers so highly appreciate is not possible anymore. Let me explain a bit the reasons why we do not put a country or regulatory domain code into our cards. LANCOM is a relatively small company, much smaller than the 'big players' like D-Link or Netgear. We officially sell to almost a dozen countries in Europe, and given the varying 5 GHz regulations in Europe, this would mean that we would have to stock and distribute half a dozen different cards instead of just one, which would be a logistical nightmare for us. ETSI regulations state that the user is principally responsible for operating the WLAN equipment in a conformant manner, so reducing to just one 'generic' card is a welcome option for us. I regret that this has these unpleasant side effects for MADWifi users, but given that there are at least 100 Windows customers for every Linux user, I doubt that our management is going to change this position anytime soon... Best regards Alfred Arnold -- Alfred Arnold E-Mail: al...@cc... Computer Club at the http://john.ccac.rwth-aachen.de:8000/alf Technical University Phone: +49-241-406526 of Aachen Fax: +49-241-406527 |