IAPP development status and technical reasons behind it withdrawn

[Jouni Malinen]

On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 02:12:17PM +0000, Amin Abdul wrote:

> I have few questions related to IAPP (Inter AP Protocol), although IEEE 802
> executive committee approved its withdrawal around february, 2006
> 
> 1- Does HOSTAPD group have any plan for further IAPP development or for it 
> replacement?

I don't think there is much point in trying to continue with IEEE
802.11F at this point. Since IEEE 802.11F itself has very minimal
functionality alone, I would need to ask what functionality you are
looking for in order to be able to answer the second part of the
question.

If there is some functionality that is desired and there is enough
interest in getting support for it, likelyhood of something happening is
much higher than just for IEEE 802.11F as a marketing material bullet
point (which is more or less the main use for which it has been
requested previously).

Every now and then, I take a look at CAPWAP, but so far, I haven't had
enough time/interest to actually go into details of what could be useful
for hostapd from that work. Anyway, I would prefer to hear of a
reasonable use case first in order to understand what people would fine
useful.

> 2- What were the technical reasons behind 802.11F withdrawn?

IEEE 802.11F was a trial-use recommended practice, not part of the IEEE
802.11 standard, and it had a two year lifetime. No one requested the
trial-use period to be extended and there did not seem to be any
interest in deploying systems using IEEE 802.11F.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA