On Wed, Feb 06, 2008 at 03:10:35PM -0500, John W. Linville wrote: > FWIW, that wouldn't be the first time we (i.e. Linux) chose to do > something that did not completely comply with a standard. If it > interoperates with other equipment and is good for users, I don't > think picky standard compliance is worthwhile. Sure, there are cases where this is reasonable. > Please note that I am not really taking a stand in favor of this ATM, > only asserting that blind standard compliance is not a good reason > to NAK it IMHO. In this case, standard compliance is certainly not the only concern I have. I'm worried about interoperability with non-mac80211 implementations. If mac80211 were to hardcoded the BSSID for IBSS and refuse to change it no matter what (i.e., behave against the IEEE 802.11 standard), IBSS would not interoperate with any other implementation if the other implementation happens to be the creator of the IBSS.. Same issues shows up (but in somewhat less frequent form) in an IBSS splitting up and re-joining. In order to allow the STAs using other implementation (no BSSID hacks) to join the IBSS, mac80211 will need to be prepared to change the BSSID (or use some much more questionable hacks to make sure it is always the mac80211-STA that wins in the selection of which BSSID will survive.. ;-). -- 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
