Re: [Madwifi-devel] 802.11 stack from hostap project

[Derek S. <de...@in...>]

Hi,
  OK, time to do some googling.

From
http://www.kerneltraffic.org/kernel-traffic/kt20040609_261_print.html
where the discusion was on a 802.11b unified stack for 2.6 kernel,

http://hostap.epitest.fi/
they give a driver and user space modules.

From the introduction for the driver module:
This is a Linux driver for wireless LAN cards based on Intersil's 
Prism2/2.5/3 chipset. The driver supports a so called Host AP mode, i.e., 
it takes care of IEEE 802.11 management functions in the host computer and 
acts as an access point. This does not require any special firmware for 
the wireless LAN card. In addition to this, it has support for normal 
station operations in BSS and possible also in IBSS. WPA and RSN (WPA2) is 
supported when used with accompanied tools, wpa_supplicant (WPA/RSN 
Supplicant) and hostapd (WPA/RSN Authenticator).



In the list of supported drivers:
Supported drivers:

    * Host AP driver for Prism2/2.5/3 (development snapshot/v0.2.x)
    * Linuxant DriverLoader with Windows NDIS driver supporting WPA
    * Agere Systems Inc. Linux Driver (Hermes-I/Hermes-II chipset)
    * madwifi (Atheros ar521x)                     <<<<<<<***********
    * ATMEL AT76C5XXx
    * Linux ndiswrapper with Windows NDIS driver
    * Broadcom wl.o driver
    * Intel ipw2100

===========================================
Kernel search.
Download 2.6.9 
 Look for strings  (case insensitive) adhoc, managed, hostap

I found nothing indicative of a generalized 802.11 protocol handler in the 
kernel. I did find in the wireless. todo.txt file, (edited for brevity)

        -------------
2) Bring new Wireless LAN driver not yet in the kernel there
        See my web page for details
        In particular : HostAP
 
        Jean II
============================================
Which suggests to me that a generalized 802.11 protocol handling code is 
not in the kernel. Sigh. (or maybe my searching was poor...)



==============================================

Conclusions:
1) the latest kernel does not contain a gneralized 802.11 protocol handler
2) external modules (such as hostap in link above) may be usable.
3) State of this code: It seems to be fairly complete. The readme is 869 
   lines long in the driver modules (c.f. madwifi's 467 lines) [[In my 
   experience, doc length is often proportional to maturity]]

Derek.

==============================================
==============================================

 On Thu, 4 Nov 2004, Michael Renzmann wrote:

> Hi.
> 
> Andrew McGregor wrote:
> > Very useful reply Sam.  Do you think you could elaborate?
> 
> What's the current state of the stack? As far as I know this is still 
> alpha and work in progress. Or possibly we don't talk about the same 
> things? You mean the effort done by Vladimir Kondratiev, who started to 
> write a generic 802.11 stack based on davem's prior work in this sector?
> 
> Bye, Mike
> 
> 
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