hostapd / management frame processing

[Don Park]

Hello,
	Im writing a GTK+ app(1) that makes use of the access point
scanning in wireless tools v15. Ive come to a problem in that gtk apps
cant be setuid, and it takes root privledges to make the scanning ioctl
call. In a way this is good because i have to rethink the app. right now
its using a polling mechanism to get an updated list of in-range APs. the
polling causes all wireless traffic to stop until the scan finishes. this
can take 1-5 seconds.

	What should happen is at the moment a beacon frame is received by
the wireless driver, a notice is sent to all interested parties with the
details of the AP. As far as I can tell, hostapd was made for just this
reason. To register my app with hostapd and be notified on reception of a
beacon frame(2) is much simpler to code for than trying to do my own
polling.  its also more efficient because im notified right when the AP
comes in range, and im waiting on a signal rather than polling over and
over.

	What i want to know is, can hostapd be modified to work with any
v15 wireless driver (airo_cs, orinoco_cs, etc)? id like to get this
functionality no matter what kind of wireless card is in use.

Don
(1)the AP is 'AP Radar' at http://apradar.sourceforge.net
(2)i understand that beacon rates can get pretty high, but hopefully it
wont be a problem
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