[PATCH] Retreive shared frequency when a singly "phy" is shared between multiple interfaces

[Jithu Jance]

> I'm starting to think that there is a real need for having a P2P
> abstraction (enable/disable P2P) with P2P device address, but I think
> that a separate network interface is almost certainly not the right
> answer.

I agree with you. We had to do use separate interface since we didn't want 
to use STA Interface for p2p device address related operations. And currently there is no way
for the  supplicant to get the P2P device address from the driver (if P2P
address is different from the primary mac address). If supplicant can retrieve 
p2p_dev_addr from driver, then supplicant can be run on wlan0 interface for 
STA operations and can use the retrieved P2P address for building P2P IE's 
and for sending P2P action frames. 

The current patch should address the functionality of retrieving the shared frequency (if we have multiple
interface shared across a single PHY). This i guess won't break anything else. Would it be possible to take-in this
patch, at least till the suggested P2P abstraction is implemented. Kindly share your thoughts on this.


- Jithu Jance.
________________________________________
From: Johannes Berg [johannes at sipsolutions.net]
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2011 3:56 PM
To: Jithu Jance
Cc: hostap at lists.shmoo.com
Subject: RE: [PATCH] Retreive shared frequency when a singly "phy" is shared between multiple interfaces

On Thu, 2011-11-10 at 02:08 -0800, Jithu Jance wrote:

> Thanks for your reply. Please correct me, if my understanding is
> wrong. I am talking about a concurrent scenario where we have a legacy
> STA on wlan0 interface(primary MAC address) already in connected
> state. Then we are starting an Autonomous GO by issuing p2p_group_add
> on wlan1(p2p_device_address) interface.

In fact, and now I'm getting sort of off-topic, I really don't like that
approach. Having "wlan1" as the P2P device interface is pretty useless
-- I think it's a workaround approach. That interface can never really
be used to transfer data, so it being a network interface is not very
natural.

I'm starting to think that there is a real need for having a P2P
abstraction (enable/disable P2P) with P2P device address, but I think
that a separate network interface is almost certainly not the right
answer.