[Wirelessdriver-devel] Re: Wirelessdriver-devel digest, Vol 1 #58 - 1 msg

[Amanda W. <am...@al...>]

Mike Marcucio <mi...@ma...> wrote:
> I got the following info from robm(thanks for
> the reply):
>
> "How does scanning work?  You issue RID FCE1 or FCE5 (but not both
> together) and wait for a few seconds.  The system will return an info
> frame containing the hosts and some info on them.  If you don't get
> this, you can manually request it after 3 seconds."

Unfortunately, scanning isn't even close to that simple.  It depends on 
the brand of card and the revision of the firmware.  Intersil firmware 
before 1.3.2 does it one way, 1.3.2 and up do it another way, early 
Orinoco firmware does it a third way, and current Orinoco firmware does 
it a fourth way.  They vary in how you kick off a scan, whether or not 
you lose your current association to an AP while it does the scan, how 
you gather the results, and what format the results are in.  Some 
drivers provide an API that hides this complexity "behind the scenes" 
for you, though.

 From a programming point of view, the simplest device to deal with is 
probably an Orinoco card.  I can't give you a code snippet, but there 
are some examples out there in various open source drivers for other 
platforms.


Amanda Walker