Confused... because hostap-0.2.6 works...

[Chris Rankin]

Hi,

I have just installed hostap_plx (v0.2.6) on a Linux
2.4.28 box, configured it to be a WEP-enabled access
point via:

iwconfig wlan0 mode Master
iwconfig wlan0 key <thingy>  ...etc etc

and found that my other adapter has successfully
associated with it in "Infrastructure" mode. Hooray!
Except that I'm not running the hostapd userspace
process on this box. I am confused... I thought that
the hostapd process was (by definition) a necessary
part of "Host AP", except that I have just been able
to establish a working wireless link without it.

Can someone please explain exactly when I would wish
to use the hostapd process? For the record, my PLX
adapter has the following firmware:

PRI: 0.3.0
STA: 1.7.1

There is no tertiary firmware loaded, unless it has
cunningly loaded itself without me knowing... The
other end of the wireless link was a USB device
running the latest linux-wlan-ng, with the following
firmware:

PRI: 1.1.2
STA: 1.8.3

On a related note, I see that a modified version of
the hostap 802.11 stack has just been submitted to
Linux for inclusion in Linux 2.6.11. Can anyone
familiar with this hostap code estimate how difficult
it might be to finally write a hostap_usb driver,
please? The obvious reference code would be the
prism2_usb driver, of course. I've already examined
the out-of-tree hostap-driver code, but there doesn't
seem to be an obvious place to add all the
URB-handling that a USB driver would need.

Thanks for any help here,
Cheers,
Chris




	
	
		
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