Mesh: Accept auth attempts from PLINK_BLOCKED nodes?

[Peter Astrand]

On Thu, 31 Aug 2023, Peter Astrand wrote:

> We are using TI wl18xx and Mesh with wpa_supplicant 2.10. This module is 
> limited to 10 nodes, so it is very common to see that all slots (iw dev 
> wlan0_mesh station dump) ends up in the "mesh plink: BLOCKED" state, which 
> prevents formation of the mesh. Blocking happens due to SAE auth failures, 
> either due to "bad" nodes that should not use this mesh (expected), and 
> sometimes even for nodes which should use this mesh and have correct SAE 
> credentials (unknown why).
> 
> I found the kernel patch on 
> https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-wireless/patch/20211220105147.88625-1-nbd@nbd.name/ 
> which clarifies the NL80211_PLINK_BLOCKED comment and Felix Fietkau 
> mentioned a hostapd follow up patch, but I cannot find any such patch? 

Found it:
https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/hostap/patch/20190218120442.77624-1-nbd@nbd.name/

The requested kernel header change has been included since Linux 5.17:

5bc03b28ec24 nl80211: clarify comment for mesh PLINK_BLOCKED state

So perhaps we should consider merging this? We are testing now.

> The plink blocking does not seem very useful to me; what drawbacks are 
> there to setting a very short duration?

Br,
Peter Åstrand