Return-path: Received: from mail-iw0-f178.google.com ([209.85.223.178]:58231 "EHLO mail-iw0-f178.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752491AbZIYVQc (ORCPT ); Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:16:32 -0400 Received: by iwn8 with SMTP id 8so1829627iwn.33 for ; Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:16:36 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <43e72e890909251406o64417544w2fd836f820eae80e@mail.gmail.com> References: <200909252005.23746.mb@bu3sch.de> <4ABD2ECE.50501@gmail.com> <43e72e890909251406o64417544w2fd836f820eae80e@mail.gmail.com> From: "Luis R. Rodriguez" Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:16:16 -0700 Message-ID: <43e72e890909251416g59a24d8as90f7a4d649c06914@mail.gmail.com> Subject: Re: Porting AR6K to use cfg80211 To: Dave Cc: Matthew Ryan , linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 2:06 PM, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote: > On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 1:57 PM, Dave wrote: >> Matthew Ryan wrote: >>> Michael Buesch writes: >>>> On Friday 25 September 2009 19:40:52 Matthew Ryan wrote: >>>>> I was curious if I could get a few expert opinions on if its possible to port >>>>> this driver to use mac80211, and how difficult/ what pitfalls there may be. >>>> The device is fullmac, so it does not require mac80211. >>>> I guess however, ar6k can be ported to use cfg80211. >>>> >>> >>> Do you know of any examples in the source tree which are fullmac, but utilize >>> cfg80211 that I could use as a base to get started? >> >> There are a few fullmac drivers in wireless-testing that use cfg80211. I >> don't think these are in the recently released 2.6.31, but are queued >> for 2.6.32. >> >> iwmc3200wifi and rndis_wlan are furthest along. orinoco is in the >> process of conversion (it uses cfg80211, but relies on the wext >> compatibility code for a large portion of functionality). > > Additionally you can poke at the HTC / HIF stuff I'm doing for ar9271: > > http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath9k_htc > > Granted I've removed all credit distribution stuff as ar9271 doesn't > use it, but it still may be easier to use that then what I had seen on > ar6k for HTC. Let me clarify a little more. ath9k_htc is a module which will use ath_htc and ath_hif_usb. ath9k_htc delcares hardware support for the 802.11n Atheros 9k family for devices which use HTC. The ar9271 usb device gets probed by ath_hif_usb. ath9k_htc is being designed as the mac80211 driver for ar9271 but it may be possible to just share the same ath9k_htc for all SoftMAC Atheros 11n HTC devices. Now, ar6k is FullMAC so an ath9k_htc per se is not needed but I'd expect you'd just need to implement a ar6k.c which uses cfg80211 and adds support for the ar6k hw famiy. You'd need to implement an ath_hif_sdio.c to handle the SDIO transport and this would be the module probing the ar6k devices over sdio. Now, sure, I don't expect any PCI/USB ar6k devices but still, this is the architectural approach I'd like to see. Luis