On 2/27/07, Jiri Benc <jbenc@xxxxxxx> wrote:
[removed bcm43xx-dev list] On Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:02:41 -0800, Stephen Hemminger wrote: > This was hashed out on netdev 2+ years ago and decided that both ethernet > and wireless devices should show up as 'eth%d'. For inclusion d80211 needs to conform > to existing mainline kernel practice. If this means breaking the expectation of older > out of tree wireless support (ie madwifi), sorry. Decided? I remember just you and hch saying "all existing wireless drivers do that, so everybody should". When pointing out that just two drivers do that (I think ipw and prism) and everybody else use something different (wlan%d most often) there was no reply. "ipw and one other driver do that so everybody should" doesn't sound like a strong argument to me. Wireless devices need different handling (setting SSID, etc.) than Ethernet ones. I think it's not so bad idea to show that difference by using a different default name. Everybody else who is in some kind different from Ethernet use different name than eth%d. I think we should conform to existing mainline practice by using something different than eth%d too.
FWIW I remember the discussion too and it wasn't something very settling. One main reason to keep eth%d convention was the fact that the wireless net devices at that time (FullMAC) handled and managed raw ethernet frames and not wireless frames and as such its relfected with eth%d convention. This was the main reasoning for prism54 to adopt eth%d convention. With SoftMAC (mac80211) things are a bit different -- wmaster handles 802.11 frames and wlan%d handles 802.3 frames. The name does not matter much but it does imply at least that I think. As such perhaps mac80211 should change to use eth%d by default. Luis - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
