[RFC 1/2] hostapd: Allow enabling and disabling of active BSSes

[Yogesh Ashok Powar]

Hi Jouni,
   please read in-line comments.
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 05:26:31AM -0800, Jouni Malinen wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 10:16:04PM +0530, Yogesh Ashok Powar wrote:
> > Currently, when an ap interface is brought down using ifconfig, hostapd is not
> > disabling the corresponding bss. Correspondingly, when the interface is brought
> > back up, hostapd does not restart the bss. Due to this, when an interface is
> > brought back up, beaconing does not begin. With this change, bringing down the
> > interface will disable the corresponding bss and restart the bss on bringing the
> > interface up using ifconfig.
> 
> What is bringing down the interface and why? This sounds like an extra
> complexity that could be easily avoided by not setting the interface
> down when it is supposed to be in use. If you want to bring the
> interface down, you can just stop hostapd..

Consider the case where multiple BSSes are started with single hostapd
instance i.e., after adding few 'bss' and 'ssid' variables to
single hostapd.conf. Here, just stopping the hostapd doesn't work if one
wants to stop one of the active BSSes.

eg., Lets say there are three BSSes running 

wlan0 (test), wlan1 (test1) and wlan2 (test2)

If we want to bring down the test1 bss, then one can do so by
ifconfig wlan1 down

And to re-enabled the test1 BSS.
ifconfig wlan1 up

This will help users to enable/disable/re-enabled of BSSes without
killing/reloading the hostapd.

Thanks
Yogesh