Return-path: Received: from styx.suse.cz ([82.119.242.94]:41860 "EHLO mail.suse.cz" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752472AbXFVNqR (ORCPT ); Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:46:17 -0400 Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2007 15:45:45 +0200 From: Jiri Benc To: Jiri Benc Cc: Johannes Berg , linux-wireless Subject: Re: [WIP] mac80211: kill mgmt interface Message-ID: <20070622154545.29eeebdb@griffin.suse.cz> In-Reply-To: <20070621151441.500d62d5@griffin.suse.cz> References: <1182418939.10821.8.camel@johannes.berg> <20070621143558.68fc8e4a@griffin.suse.cz> <1182429920.21939.1.camel@johannes.berg> <20070621151441.500d62d5@griffin.suse.cz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Thu, 21 Jun 2007 15:14:41 +0200, Jiri Benc wrote: > That's true. Still, couldn't we find a better solution? I have a new idea. Maybe it will turn out to have fatal design or implementation problems, but anyway. First, I thought how all of this would be easier if we have a native 802.11 (virtual) interfaces and don't translate from Ethernet. Then I realized it wouldn't help us much - we want to specify some parameters for each frame, so we'd have to use some encapsulation anyway to allow radiotap headers. Hm, wait a moment - why we cannot use the encapsulation we currently have? That means, why can't we encapsulate raw 802.11 frames in Ethernet frames? Before you reject the whole idea, please think a moment about it. The actual implementation is not hard: use our own proprietary ethertype and use the whole 802.11 frame including MAC and radiotap header as a payload. We can even use the same format for sending management frames to the user space for hostapd's use without any extra interface. Several things need to be handled first, of course: - Returning of tx status. That could be solved by adding a stamp into radiotap header of injected frame and returning a status (not the whole frame, just the stamp plus some relevant info) through netlink. - Interference with bridging. We don't want our injected (or returned management) frame to be bridged. That could perhaps be solved by using a certain Ethernet destination address (our own address?), but I'm not sure here. - There will probably more issues pop up. Jiri -- Jiri Benc SUSE Labs