On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 11:04:24AM -0500, Dan Williams wrote: > Because in the case of hidden SSIDs, wpa_supplicant pretty much says to > use ap_scan=2. Or ap_scan=1 with scan_ssid if and only if the driver supports it.. > 2) scan_ssid=1 hasn't worked consistently on all drivers because it's > pretty new and many drivers don't support it yet. This is supposed to > make the driver/firmware send out probe request for the SSID in > question. This is not only a driver issue, though. I believe there are full MAC cards that do not support scan request with a specific SSID and the only way to make them work with hidden SSIDs is to try to associate with the SSID (i.e., use ap_scan=2). In theory, wpa_supplicant could try to figure out whether the scan with a specific SSID works or not (though, this is not that easy to do since old drivers are likely to just ignore the provided SSID and do a wildcard scan) and if that is the case, start probing the network with ap_scan=2 like behavior. This would mean that it would go through the configured networks and try to associate with each that is enabled and marked with scan_ssid=1. If association is completed successfully, the network could be added to scan results (at this point, the driver would also be more likely to actually include it in the scan results, so proper data could now be available). The main problem with this is that it can take quite long time to do this kind of association probing just to be able to get scan results. Furthermore, at least some cards may require a full match in security parameters, i.e., each SSID could potentially require multiple association attempts (assuming the network block was not configured with explicit security parameters). Taken into account how much I like hidden SSIDs, I would likely just prefer to ignore the issue and try to make people use proper security with visible SSIDs if they want to limit access to their network. Use of hidden SSIDs is just plain horrible way of making clients suffer without any level of increased security. -- Jouni Malinen PGP id EFC895FA - 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
