Wpa_supplicant -enabling Wifi-Direct and normal Wi-fi at the same time on Android

[Jouni Malinen]

On Thu, Mar 03, 2011 at 09:27:03AM +0100, martin.macuha at orange-ftgroup.com wrote:
> I would like to have ON both Wi-fi modes at the same time, thus my Nexus
> will be associated as STA with normal AP and meanwhile will work as AP
> for other devices!

wpa_supplicant can do this, but this depends on the driver being able to
provide support for virtual interfaces.

> I do not know whether it is possible without changes in kernel (If not,
> what should be change to make it working). Also I do not know whether is
> such dual mode supported by actual drivers. This feature (to be STA for
> one network and AP of another network at the same time) is part of the
> Wi-fi Direct standard, but it is optional, so it might not be supported
> even on the certified devices!

> It seems that cfg80211 is able to virtualize device but I wonder whether
> it is possible to create two virtual devices and make them running.
> Also, I am not sure whether it is the easiest and correct way. My Nexus
> (rooted, Android 2.2.1) uses Broadcom 4329 Wifi +BT chip.

I'm not familiar with the capabilities of the driver used with that
chip, so I'm not sure how easy it would be to be support concurrent mode
there. Anyway, I would be surprised if this were to work without some
work in the kernel driver.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA