[CUWiN-Dev] [mattw@seattlewireless.net: [Fwd: [Roofnet-hackers] Fwd: [Madwifi-users] future directions]]

[Jim Thompson]

On Feb 27, 2005, at 1:06 AM, David Young wrote:

> This e-mail (below) is making the rounds.  My own personal 
> interpretation
> is that Linux is 2-3 years behind [*] the BSDs in its generic 802.11
> support, and it will remain so until Linux kernel developers get their
> collective heads out of their collective asses, and pick up the 802.11
> subsystem that is called 'net80211' in BSD.

Which they probably won't do for, oh, 2-3 years.   Until then, its work 
with freebsd
and/or netbsd, or stick to the drivers that already use net80211, or 
(if you like that kind of thing)
start re-writing drivers that don't use net80211.

> Part of the "major work going on outside the madwifi CVS repository"
> that Sam alludes to may be virtual AP support, which he is working on.
> VAPs are pretty neat by themselves, but what I think is especially cool
> is that the VAP code sets a foundation for things like OPN, MultiNet,
> et cetera.

That, true.

The same virtualization should allow a single card to operate in 
multiple modes.   Say,
implement an "infrastructure" AP, as well as a WDS or adhoc link.   Or 
multiple ad-hoc links,
or 10s of WDS links.

Combine this with the channel-switching code from things like 
OPN/MultiNet, and a little bit of
scheduling (such that others don't attempt to send you frames while 
you're off-channel), and real
scalability can happen.

> [*] NetBSD is about a year behind FreeBSD---I haven't re-imported in
> that long.  Today I spent 8+ hours merging the latest code from 
> FreeBSD.
> Work still remains.  It's going more smoothly than I expected!

You are a saint.  Where do I send the check?  :-)

jim