Many discussions in #Linux-wireless and even on this list seem to
revolve around how regulatory enforcement is provided. At one point I
thought that I understood how this works, but as things evolve it seems
I am losing my edge. With the goal of understanding a unified policy
for all drivers and proper (safe) regulatory enforcement, I'm starting
this thread so that people can help clarify how this currently works,
and how it should work.
As I see this all working in an ideal world is as follows:
1.) Driver reads eeprom of card for the permissible frequencies for that
hardware. It is only safe to allow the frequencies in the eeprom because
we cannot assume that any other values were calibrated in the hardware.
This information (or initial regulatory domain) should be passed up to
and immediately enforced by crda. Drivers shouldn't have their own
enforcement in addition to crda as we have a properly functioning
regulatory enforcement engine and having 1 per driver makes things
pointlessly complicated.
2.) If the user sets a reg domain, intersect user reg domain with eeprom
reg domain.
3.) When user connects to AP, if available, read country IE and
intersect that with the currently effective reg domain (which is at
least the eeprom and may include user input from step 2 as well).
I realize some distros have cool stuff happening like setting a reg
domain using the location from the timezone or some other cool thing.
For the purpose of this discussion however, that is really nothing
different from a user set reg domain (in fact I believe that is how it
is done) so let's not worry about those specifics of "well the user
didn't directly call iw reg set so blah blah blah".
How far off base am I here? I know that Intel enforces reg domain in
their ucode and we cannot do anything about it, but I'm more interested
in the cards where our drivers have full control. Are the drivers
themselves performing limiting that users don't even get to see? Or is
all this actually passed up to crda as it should be? I'm personally
especially interested in how the three atheros drivers do it, but I
think this discussion should extend beyond my personal interests and any
and all drivers should be discussed.
Thanks,
Rick Farina
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