Issues with new D-Bus API

[Marcel Holtmann]

Hi Jouni,

> I would prefer to make all IEs available in a single property (i.e.,
> just the data as-is from the BSS entry). If we need some additional
> information, like the TLVs from reassembled WPS IE(s), that could
> certainly be provided. Similarly, I would like to understand what the
> clients are doing with WPA/RSN IE information? If they just need to know
> whether the IE was there, it would be better to use boolean for that. If
> they need to process the data somehow, they could almost as easily fetch
> it from the all-IEs array. If they want to avoid parsing, we could
> provide some parsed information (e.g., cipher suite).

all clients have to parse the WPA and RSN IEs. The most important part
is the authentication suites to differ between PSK and 802.1x. The
cipher suites are less important actually since they don't provide any
additional important information for clients. Unless of course you wanna
clearly enforce certain types of security. In most cases wpa_supplicant
does the right things automatically, so I don't see big needs for it.

So generally speaking it would be a good idea to have the full list of
IE that can be parsed if need. For WPA and RSN it would be easy to just
provide a nice dictionary with the parsed information.

We could either provide WPA and RSN dictionaries with their information
separately or just combine them and provide them as a common set of BSS
properties. Similar to what we have with the Interface capabilities.

For example "Protocol" with an array of strings ("wpa", "rsn") to show
WPA or RSN support. And then "KeyMgmt" to differentiate between PSK and
802.1x etc.

Only problem is when we have messed up APs with WPA and RSN IEs that
contradict each other.

When it comes to WPS, we do have to parse the details and handle certain
specifics. For example the N900 wrongly assume when WPS IE present to
start WPS when connecting. Even if it is not used at all. So we need to
figure out what the AP actually supports and if WPS is really enabled.

Regards

Marcel