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Subject: Re: [PATCH] mac80211: report per-chain signal values through ethtool.
To:     Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>,
        linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org
References: <20220329210228.8137-1-greearb@candelatech.com>
 <8542c3eac729563fef1bc78d28c740453fba88bd.camel@sipsolutions.net>
From:   Ben Greear <greearb@candelatech.com>
Organization: Candela Technologies
Message-ID: <c7ee84a4-2be5-4176-2701-8c2e691a85fe@candelatech.com>
Date:   Fri, 1 Jul 2022 06:05:55 -0700
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On 7/1/22 2:55 AM, Johannes Berg wrote:
> On Tue, 2022-03-29 at 14:02 -0700, greearb@candelatech.com wrote:
>> From: Ben Greear <greearb@candelatech.com>
>>
>> Combine them into a u64, each byte is one chain.
> 
> This only works up to 4 chains, but the specs at least support 8. I
> don't think we have any drivers for that, but ...

u64 gives 8 bytes, so the ethtool part can support 8 chains.
The mac80211 part only supports up to 4 chains currently though.

> 
> And it's also rather ugly, IMHO.
> 
> We're reporting these through nl80211 anyway though, no? Why should we
> prefer ethtool, which fundamentally limits to a single value for the AP
> rather than giving the full per-station view.

I already gather ethtool stats for STA vdevs, so adding another stat is
basically free as far as performance is concerned.  That is important
to me.  I do not currently program much against netlink API (just scrape
existing tools output).

I understand if you don't want it upstream though.

> 
>> Re-work the way that APs averaged stats to be more
>> efficient.
> 
> Isn't that completely unrelated?

At least somewhat unrelated.

Thanks,
Ben

> 
> johannes
> 


-- 
Ben Greear <greearb@candelatech.com>
Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com