Obtaining access point connectivity information at application level

[Sriram Chadalavada]

Dan,
   Thank you for your reply.

I also found out that reading RID FD40 (PortStatus) from the prism card
provides current link status. :
1 = Disabled
2 = Search for initial connection
4 = Connected to access point
5 = Out of range

I wonder why this information is not being provided by the hostap driver in
the 'status' field of /proc/net/wireless.  That would allow wireless tools
to retrieve and display this information.

Madwifi driver (on my laptop) does update the status field with its values
of current link status.

- Sriram


On 6/14/06, Dan Williams <dcbw at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2006-06-14 at 15:00 -0500, Sriram Chadalavada wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> >       We are trying to create a GUI application that reports status of
> > a prism wireless card (station/client/managed mode)  on our embedded
> > device that runs 2.4.26 kernel and hostap V2.6. We are using the older
> > versions due to legacy issues.
> >
> > How can we obtain the following information from the hostap driver
> > (ioctl calls??) :-
> > 1. If the card has been taken out of range of an access point i.e.
> > current linkstatus.
>
> Use the wireless extensions SIOCGIWAP call, and check for a valid BSSID
> address using standard ethernet address validation functions.  i.e., if
> the BSSID returned there is not all 4s, all 1s, or all 0s, then you are
> associated and connected to the AP.
>
> > 2. If the card can 'see' an access point but cannot connect to it (due
> > to authentication mismatch or wrong WEP key, for example)
>
> You can't do this.  You can tell whether or not the AP requires
> encryption, and you can tell whether it's WPA or WEP, but you _cannot_
> tell without trying to connect, whether your key is correct.  That's
> just the way wireless is, that's the same on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS
> X.
>
> You also cannot ever tell if your WEP key is wrong unless the card fails
> to complete association with the AP.  If you enable Shared Key mode on
> the AP, you can't authenticate unless your WEP key is correct.  But
> Shared Key mode is quite an insecure joke and should never be used.
> With the alternative, Open System authentication, you never know whether
> your WEP key is wrong, period.  So you're out of luck here.
>
> With WPA, it's a lot easier, but you still have to start authentication
> to figure out if the key is wrong of course.  The driver should notify
> your application by sending a wireless rtnetlink event of SIOGSIWAP.  If
> the BSSID passed in that message is valid, association has completed
> successfully.  If the BSSID passed is invalid, association has failed
> for some reason, or the connection to the access point has been lost.
>
> > I understand that linkstatus information is communicated by the card
> > firmware as an Unsolicited MAC Mgmt frame. So, the driver itself is
> > aware when the card goes out of range. My question is how can I obtain
> > this information at the application level? The 'status' field in
> > the /proc/net/wireless file does not seem to indicate this
> > information.
>
> Use wireless extensions instead.  Search for 'wireless-tools'.
>
> Dan
>
>
>
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