On 06/28/2011 11:57 PM, Jouni Malinen wrote:
On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 09:46:18PM +0200, Michel Alexandre Salim wrote:
Some wireless base stations implement 802.11n mode in ways that
open-source drivers cannot handle properly, resulting in very
unstable connections. This patch introduces an '11n_disable' option
to the ath9k driver, similar to the same option for the iwlagn
driver.
What is so special about this that makes it impossible for open source
drivers to handle? The proper approach here would be to figure out what
is causing the interop issue and fix (or more likely, work around) that.
To be honest, I'm not sure. Similar problems have cropped up over the
years, with various different base stations. In this case I *might* be
able to find out what base stations we're actually using in the building
-- they're managed by a different organization so it might take time. In
cases where it's a free wifi at a cafe somewhere it'd be harder to try
and debug.
In addition, if this is really needed, why would this be a driver
specific hack rather than providing a shared mechanism in mac80211 to
disable 802.11n support? It would sound strange if there would need to
be a new module parameter in every 802.11n driver to handle something
like this.
I agree with you and Adrian; it should ideally be in the 802.11 stack.
But as Ben noted, it does have a useful purpose -- for debugging.
If the maintainers are agreeable to a shared mac80211 mechanism, which
is the preferred way to handle this -- get this in, then refactor *both*
iwlagn and ath9k to use it, or to implement a shared mechanism,
demonstrate it with ath9k, then fix iwlagn later?
Thanks,
--
Michel Alexandre Salim
µblog: http://identi.ca/hircus
http://twitter.com/hircus
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