in hostapd, what are devices wlan0ap and wlan0sta for?

[Jouni Malinen]

On Sun, May 25, 2003 at 06:11:55PM -0700, Greg Johnson wrote:

> and then run "hostapd config1", and then do "iwconfig", I see the usual
> wlan0 device, but I also see two other devices "wlan0ap" and "wlan0sta".
> 
> What can be done with those two devices?  What would they be used for?

wlan0ap is used to deliver frames to and from hostapd with full IEEE
802.11 headers (instead of Ethernet headers used in wlan0). hostapd uses
it for receiving and sending (mostly) IEEE 802.11 management frames
(authentication/association).

wlan0sta is used in experimental mode to allow AP to associate with
another AP as a station while continuing simultaneously to operate as an
AP. You would need to set assoc_ap_addr in hostapd.conf to use this. In
addition, please note that this is very experimental and works only with
couple of very old station firmware versions.

> I've tried a couple of things, like using ifconfig to assign IP addresses
> to these devices.  But, it doesn't look to me like they associate with other
> AP's.  I can't ping through them, etc.

You cannot send IP packets through wlan0ap. If you can get assoc_ap_addr
working (see above), wlan0sta would be used just like wlan0 in station
mode, i.e., you would assign an IP address to it.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA