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

Jouni Malinen j
Sat Nov 19 01:33:56 PST 2011


On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 03:31:35AM -0800, Jithu Jance wrote:
> 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. 

This is something that we need to discuss in more detail (on
linux-wireless mailing list, I'd guess). There are other driver (e.g.,
ath6kl) where a mechanism for being able to use a different address or
well, at least some kind of different context for P2P operations may be
desired. I agree with Johannes that adding a separate wlan1 interface
for P2P device is not really the best way of doing this. Though, there
could be some potential issues in being able to multiplex all P2P
management operations on the station interface (but most, if not all, of
those have been resolved with new attributes allowing TX rate control
etc.).

It could be a good starting point to run some experiments with a new
nl80211 command to enable P2P functionality on the initial wlan0
interface with a mechanism that allows the driver to return a P2P
Device Address that may (or may not) differ from the wlan0 MAC address.

> 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.

While shared_freq() was not originally really meant for nl80211-based
drivers, I applied this now.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA



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