Some more WDS queries

[Vic Berdin]

Hello Jouni,

First of all, thanks to all your efforts on this
project and for trying to respond to all queries on
this list.

I've been playing with hostAP WDS since the day I've
posted my haphazzard queries, and I learned that most
of my questions are already covered in README.prism2 -
sorry about that.

Anyways, I do have some more queries pertaining WDS
behavior. Here's my setup:

Win98PC---air---WDS2---air---WDS1---wired---ISP

Win98PC (Orinoco Silver/Win98)
WDS2 (Linksys WPC11/Linux 2.2.20)
WDS1 (ZCOM-XI300/Linux 2.2.20)

For both WDS machines:
beacon_int=1000
ap_bridge_packets=0
autom_ap_wds=1
other_ap_policy=1
wds_type=2

I've already came up with additional wds.opts and wds
script to automate my needs, and everything is
*ALMOST* running as expected.

What caught my attention on your response is that, you
said that associations are expected to expire after 5
minutes of no activity (0 frames) from the stations.

See, I mentioned that my setup is *ALMOST* working,
because my connection from Win98PC seem to die down if
no activity has been performed for quite some time
(about 5mins or so). And the interesting part is that,
connectivity can be re-established if I engage an
activity (like pinging) from WDS2 to WDS1 (or WDS2 to
Win98PC). Having to continously 'ping' from WDS2
somehow keeps Win98PC connection available at all
times.
What I'd like to see, is to get a link from WDS2
clients to WDS1 onwards, 'UP' at all times.
Is there something I could check/tweak? Possible
important WDS setting I'm missing out?

TIA - And still experimenting... Vic

--__--__--

Message: 5
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 20:47:50 -0800
From: Jouni Malinen <jkmaline at cc.hut.fi>
To: hostap at shmoo.com
Subject: Re: WDS queries

On Tue, Mar 25, 2003 at 05:35:09AM -0800, Vic Berdin
wrote:

> When adding other APs to the WDS environment using
the
> command 'iwpriv wlan0 wds_add 00:00:00:00:00:00', I
> noticed that ALL the nearby (target) APs involved
must
> first be set to 'master' mode in order for them to
be
> detected by the host AP being configured. With this,
> does this mean that I can only set 'repeater' mode
for
> the repeater APs after all has been properly
> detected/added? 

Automatic WDS link addition is using beacon frames
from neighboring APs
to detect their addresses. In 'repeater' mode, the
device does not send
beacon frames and the other devices do not have a
mechanism for finding
out their neighbors. Of course you could add some
proprietary mechanism
for neighbor discovery without using beacon frames,
but I'm not sure it
would be worthwhile to implement something like that
since beacons can
already be used for this.

> I also noticed that when an AP has already been
> detected (macaddy in /proc/net/hostap/wlan0), the
only
> means of flushing the detected APs is by restarting
> card manager. Is there any other way I can flush ALL
> detected APs (in
> /proc/net/hostap/wlan0/**:**:**:**:**:**) without
> having to restart card manager?

These entries are supposed to expire just like
associated station
entries, i.e., five minutes after no frames being
received from the 
said
station/AP.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                         
  PGP id 
EFC895FA



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