[PATCH 2/2] Update IE after association regardless driver roaming support

[Dmitry Shmidt]

On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 1:32 AM, Jouni Malinen <j at w1.fi> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 10:30:12AM -0800, Dmitry Shmidt wrote:
>> Update IE is necessary if roaming is done by driver / FW, but will
>> not harm in other case
>
> Could you please clarify why this would not do harm in other cases?

It is possible that I am missing something but what I think is that
in assoc event it is maybe not necessary sometimes but definitely
safe to update current wpa IEs from wpa_s->current_bss.

I am trying to resolve the case when driver/FW is doing roaming but not
exporting WPA_DRIVER_FLAGS_BSS_SELECTION flag. Exporting this
flag causes for wpa_supplicant not to provide BSSID and Freq for association
request and this is slowing initial connection.

> The WPA_DRIVER_FLAGS_BSS_SELECTION case is know to require this which is why
> the IE update code is there. However, it is not known whether there
> could be drivers that do not have correct information in scan results
> for all cases (e.g., some of the hidden SSID/multi-SSID cases could be a
> bit risky in this area). Consequently, I could see this change
> potentially breaking some working cases. Since I see no real
> justification for this change, I'd rather not add it.
>
> Drivers that do BSS selection in the driver/firmware better indicate
> that to the user space and the real fix here would be to make any driver
> that could today need this change work properly in this area. Working
> around them with a change in wpa_supplicant is not justifiable if there
> is risk in breaking something for other drivers.
>
> As far as being able to fix one known driver misbehavior in this area,
> there is already a change in upstream kernel moving ahead with the
> BSSID/frequency hint attributes. Once that hits wireless-testing.git, we
> can add the wpa_supplicant changes to provide that information to the
> driver even when WPA_DRIVER_FLAGS_BSS_SELECTION is advertised. That will
> hopefully remove any assumed need for not advertising this capability
> correctly.
>
> --
> Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA
> _______________________________________________
> HostAP mailing list
> HostAP at lists.shmoo.com
> http://lists.shmoo.com/mailman/listinfo/hostap