wpa_supplicant 2.10 (also HEAD): mt7610 USB 5 GHz AP limited to 20 MHz, but hostapd can configure 80MHz?

[Leho Kraav]

On Fri, 2023-04-21 at 09:19 +0200, Beniamino Galvani wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I think that to enable wider channels there must be explicit
> configuration in wpa_supplicant and NetworkManager is not passing
> that
> configuration (for example, parameters "ht40", "max_oper_chwidth",
> "vht_center_freq1") because it's not clear it would work for
> everybody; I mean, the hotspot functionality wouldn't be able to
> start if NM sets e.g. ht40=1 and the card doesn't support it, or the
> channels are wrong.
> 
> Please see this NetworkManager issue:
> 
> https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/-/issues/1243
> 
> One approach would be to make the channel width configurable in
> NetworkManager, so that it can send the appropriate parameters to
> wpa_supplicant.
> 
> Or, if there is way for NM to detect the best parameters
> automatically, that would be even better; but I'm not sure if this is
> possible.

Thanks, that's exactly the right issue on NM side.

My thread opener here was looking for how to get wpa_supplicant to automatically do more.
Looks like as we're heading into 2.11, such still won't be the available.

"hostapd doesn't have DBus" - unlucky! Probably an even bigger project than getting wpa_supplicant upgraded?

So that might leave us with NetworkManager as the fastest way forward:

* could NM expose more "custom configuration" options? I doesn't have to bear the full autoconfiguration burdain, and risk getting things wrong.
* can wpa_supplicant run a DBus configuration + custom enhancements in /etc/wpa_supplicant/*.conf?