driver behavior when beacon changes

[Jouni Malinen]

On Fri, Dec 21, 2007 at 08:44:07AM -0800, Chuck Tuffli wrote:
> What event is a device driver supposed to generate if it detects that an
> AP has changed security types? I recently ran across a case in which an
> AP's beacon changed from including the RSNA IE to including the WPA IE,
> and without sending a de-auth or disassoc to the client. I'm running the
> 0.5.7 client with the WEXT driver and using ap_scan=1.

If the beacon change is compatible with the previously used policy
(e.g., adding WPA IE sounds like such a change), I would not expect to
see any event messages from the driver. If the change is not compatible
with the current policy (e.g., RSN association and RSN IE removed), I
would expect the client driver to disassociate and generate a suitable
disassociation event for WEXT. However, in that case I would have
assumed that the AP would have already diassociated the client anyway..

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA