Option to set interface to 4-addr mode

[Konstantinos Natsakis]

On Sat, Nov 05, 2022 at 04:33:57PM +0200, Jouni Malinen wrote:
>On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 12:21:33AM +0300, Konstantinos Natsakis wrote:
>> Would you be interested in a patch for wpa_supplicant that adds a new
>> command line option to set an interface to 4-address mode?
>
>Using a command line option for this sounds strange to me. Isn't the
>4-address mode going to be used based on the actual network rather than
>as a global setting?
>
I was thinking of a per interface option, like, say -b and -C.

>> Does it make more sense, perhaps, to always set an interface to 4-addr mode
>> when the `-b` option is present?
>
>I'm not convinced this would be the correct thing to do for all cases
>and as such, would rather avoid potentially breaking something and not
>change existing behavior.
>
Agreed.

>> Some context: I did some work on https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/-/merge_requests/1330
>> (Support setting 4-addr (WDS) mode per WiFi connection), and it was
>> suggested that wpa_supplicant should handle setting 4-addr mode of the
>> interface, which I too think make sense.
>
>That "per WiFi connection" part would seem to point towards having a per
>network profile configuration parameter instead of a global parameter
>for this. As an example, the multi_ap_backhaul_sta parameter mentioned
>in that discussion uses an approach that could be more appropriate here.
>Doing the same for 4-address mode part without the full Multi AP
>functionality using a new per-network parameter could be the way to go
>with this type of functionality.
>
Sounds good to me. I will try preparing a patch, but I may have to bother 
you with more questions :-)

Thanks,

Konstantinos