Difference between Prism 2 HostAP and Prism54's FirmwareAP ?

[Jouni Malinen]

On Thu, Nov 27, 2003 at 05:33:45PM +0100, Melis van den Brink wrote:

> I was wondering (before buying any WiFi-cards) what the main difference 
> between these two *AP-modes is. Prism2 supports something that's called 
> HostAP whereas Prism54 (see www.prism54.org) supports something like 
> FirmwareAP.

Actually, Prism2 supports both "Host AP" and "firmware AP" modes.

> Can someone please explain what the main difference between these two modes is 
> ? Is one better than the other ? Is not supporting HostAP-mode a reason not 
> to buy cards based on the prism54-chipset ?

The main difference is in which component in the system is taking care
of IEEE 802.11 management functionality (like authentication and
association). Host AP mode leaves these to the host system whereas
firmware AP mode does these within the wlan card. Which one is better
depends on your needs.. If you want to change something in the
management code or experiment with whatever, you most likely would
prefer to have more control and Host AP mode would be more useful. If
you just want a basic AP, you probably don't care about which mode is
used, assuming it supports everything you need.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA