Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262045AbVEXNHw (ORCPT ); Tue, 24 May 2005 09:07:52 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262036AbVEXNHw (ORCPT ); Tue, 24 May 2005 09:07:52 -0400 Received: from styx.suse.cz ([82.119.242.94]:54202 "EHLO mail.suse.cz") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262038AbVEXNHo (ORCPT ); Tue, 24 May 2005 09:07:44 -0400 Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 15:07:11 +0200 From: Jiri Benc To: NetDev Cc: LKML , jgarzik@pobox.com, pavel@suse.cz Subject: [0/5] Improvements to the ieee80211 layer Message-ID: <20050524150711.01632672@griffin.suse.cz> X-Mailer: Sylpheed-Claws 1.0.4a (GTK+ 1.2.10; x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1727 Lines: 38 The ieee80211 layer, now present in -mm, lacks many important features (actually it's just a part of the ipw2100/ipw2200 driver; these cards do a lot of the processing in the hardware/firmware and thus the layer currently can not be used for simpler devices). This is the first series of patches that try to convert it to a generic IEEE 802.11 layer, usable for most of today's wireless cards. The long term plan is: - to implement a complete 802.11 stack in the kernel, making it easy to write drivers for simple (cheap) devices - to implement all of Ad-Hoc, AP and monitor modes in the layer, so it will be easy to support them in the drivers - to integrate Wireless Extensions to unify the kernel-userspace interface of all the drivers This means that drivers for "stupid" (simple, cheap) cards should be very short and easy to write, whereas drivers for "clever" cards will be longer (but still shorter than they are now). We have a couple of cards for testing, and we gradually modify the drivers for ipw2100 and ipw2200 with the development of the layer. When the layer is mature enough for the "stupid" cards, we will rewrite the driver for Atheros-based cards to use this layer. We plan to send all the patches for these drivers to the netdev list. Of course, we are in close contact with Pavel Machek, who is pushing the ipw2100 driver upstream. Any comments and suggestions are appreciated. Jiri Benc and Jirka Bohac SUSE Labs - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/