Multiple SSIDs on a single BSSID (was: Multiple SSID)

Johannes Berg johannes
Thu Oct 25 12:25:57 PDT 2007


Some further thoughts on this if you want to work on it.

I think you misunderstood me, but I didn't put that right. mac80211
doesn't really need to support this, see below.

But let's discuss the starting point first; I'm thinking that multiple
SSIDs on the same BSSID are implemented by an AP by treating all
stations as belonging to the same BSS wrt. QoS, AID assignment etc.,
hiding the SSID in beacons and then keying off the SSID given in probe
requests and association requests to determine which network the station
wants to use. Different group keys can be used to separate the networks.

I'd be very interested in this as well because it would use the VLAN
interface code in mac80211 on the AP side so that I could test that at
the same time as client implementations.

>From the mac80211 perspective it is pretty trivial:
 - create a VLAN interface for each SSID
 - beacon with zero-length SSID
 - put stations into correct VLAN depending on the SSID they used in
   their association request frame

If you need help with the kernel side I'm certainly willing to give
advice and help.

It seems to me that the hostapd changes would essentially be:
 - allow having multiple SSIDs
 - keep some sort of SSID-structure for each BSS
 - assign stations to vlans depending on the SSID they used

I do not, however, know whether the internal hostapd structures
facilitate this let alone how to implement it.

johannes
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