How do I configure non-broadcasting ssid for my ad-hoc network?

[Jouni Malinen]

On Mon, Jul 07, 2014 at 08:42:39PM +0530, Saurabh Chakrabarti wrote:
> We want to create a ad-hoc network which will not show up on laptops
> or mobile phones automatically. (non-discoverable)
> We want only our nodes to discover each other, mainly because our
> nodes will know the SSID of the network. Someone from outside who
> sniff's the SSID will be blocked by password for the network, but no
> one will know the SSID just because it pops up on their devices.
> 
> For doing this, we want to configure an adhoc network with the
> following requirements
> 1. No beacons
> 2. Nodes should respond to probe requests only when the request
> contains its own ssid.
> 3. Nodes shoud be able to send probe request with that particular ssid
> 
> Is this possible?

That's not how IEEE 802.11 IBSS works. If you are trying to build some
kind of non-standard "ad-hoc network" using 802.11 to some extent, you
might be able to do something like this, but please note that this will
likely require custom changes in all the participating devices. I have
no interest in supporting that in wpa_supplicant (or cfg80211 for that
matter), so this would likely end up being a proprietary design for the
specific devices. In general, I'd assume there would be better ways of
doing whatever this is trying to achieve.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA