Hi folks -
If you could generate and manage powersave protocol frames to an AP from
the mac80211 stack, without actually putting the radio to sleep, you
could do some interesting things.
For example you could allow any logical network interface to have a
different channel. In this case, during the time that the channel you
are associated on has been told you have gone into powersave mode, you
can actually spend time on that other channel, before switching the
channel back to check in with the AP. So you could for example run
monitor mode on channel 11 while being associated on channel 2, given
the limitation that sometimes you aren't listening because you are
taking care of business on channel 2. This can surely lead to ripping
out all the "scanning" stuff and ioctl(s) from kernel mode and doing it
from a regular interface using the existing Monitor semantics.
Depending on the limitations of the time you can arrange to "sleep" with
the AP, using this technique you could even associate multiple logical
interfaces to APs on different channels despite they are sharing one
physical radio. That could be cool for dealing with realtime selection
of the best channel/AP when the guy is mobile, for example.
Is there something like firmware constraints or the detail of the
powersaving protocol that kill this dead or is it possible to consider?
-Andy
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