On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 12:41:05PM -0500, Pat Erley wrote: > Having run into this same issue before, I considered adding some > default values for the case that wmm is not configured, but someone > tries to enable 802.11n, I just never decided where the best spot > for that would be. Should this sort of thing be a hostapd default > or somewhere in the cfg80211/mac80211 layer? I was thinking this > should be something that hostapd does. > > As I see it, there are a few ways to prevent this problem: > > 1. Hostapd doesn't allow 802.11n to be enabled without wmm I don't think that that would ever happen since as far as I can tell, WMM is not required from 802.11n based on any standard or specification. (Sure, there may be some non-IEEE certifications that require it, but hostapd is not limited by such requirements; it just needs to allow one to implement a device to meet such needs.) > 2. Hostapd does allow 802.11n to be enabled without wmm, but uses > defaults What do you mean with "defaults" here? > 3. Hostapd doesn't care about this, and the kernel doesn't allow > 802.11n without wmm My comment on (1) would apply here. > 4. Hostapd doesn't care, but the kernel makes the correnctions I don't think that that would be a good idea either and well, not really at all suitable for the current design of where the HT/WMM IEs come from for management frames in AP mode. > I believe 2 is the cleanest solution. So that the packets passed > from hostapd can make it through unmolested, and new hostapd versions > can work with older kernels. Any other solution I'm not thinking of? I do not fully understand what (2) is, but it may be close enough to what I think would be a reasonable approach: - for non-AP STA case, allows association with HT even if WMM (or IEEE 802.11 QoS) is not enabled (mac80211 change) - for AP case, make hostapd default to enabling WMM with default EDCA parameters if HT is enabled and there is no explicit configuration for disabling WMM - if WMM is explicitly disabled in hostapd.conf, allow IEEE 802.11n to be enabled without WMM/QoS The main focus here is to make it less likely for users to end up configuring something they did not plan on doing while not removing flexibility in configuration. I don't know any particularly good reasons for disabling WMM/QoS/aggregation, but that is not good enough justification to make it impossible to do so. -- 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
