On Wed, 2023-09-06 at 06:34 -0400, Wen Gong wrote: > Currently the local link address of all links is random generated by > eth_random_addr() in mac80211 while connecting to a MLO AP for station > mode. The MAC address of link is not passed from NL command. The 1st > link address is generated while authenticate with AP, the other links' > addresses are generated after assoc success with AP. > > It is not convenient for some driver, reason is, for station mode, > the interface with its mac address is already created in driver after > wlan load, it is used for hw scan and non-MLO connection. > > When connecting to MLO AP, driver reuse the interface as the 1st link of > MLO. If the mac address of the 1st link changed to a new value, then > driver need to change the mac address and do many synchronous operation > with firmware. Thus the operation become complex. After MLO disconnect, > driver need to restore the old mac address, it is also another complex > operation. > > The hw scan maybe happen through the MLO connection/disconnection. And > the hw scan uses the 1st link address while MLO connected and uses the > interface address while MLO is disconnected, this leads hw scan complex. > > Hence add this interface to allow driver to generate the address of each > link while MLO connection. Then driver could provide the same mac address > for the 1st link, thus hw scan/NON-MLO connection/1st link of MLO will use > the same mac address, then operation become easy. Maybe after all this explanation, all we need is a flag "reuse MLD address for assoc link"? > + ret = drv_generate_link_addr(sdata->local, sdata, > + link_id, link->conf->addr); > + if (ret) > + eth_random_addr(link->conf->addr); should probably refactor this into a separate function though. I'm also not sure how the driver even knows that a link it's being asked to get the address for *is* the assoc link? Do you want to rely on that being the first address handed out? johannes
