Ref : HostAP IAPP Code

[Jouni Malinen]

On Thu, Feb 24, 2005 at 05:57:15AM -0000, rajan  batra wrote:

>       1. Is any work being done in IAPP code developement.

Difficult to say, I don't really know.

>       2. As said by you, about uncertainity of IAPP being part of standard, is it recommended to proceed with deployment of IAPP and enhancing Hostapd code of IAPP. 

If by IAPP you mean IEEE 802.11F-2003, there is no uncertainty about
whether it is part of the standard (IEEE Std 802.11); it is not. It is a
recommended practice for trial-use and as such, it will expire in two
years from publication (if I remember IEEE rules correctly) which would
be in July 2005 unless it gets extended.. Since IEEE 802 does not work
on standardizing on IP protocols (i.e., it is limited to layers one and
two), I would assume IAPP could be considered to be out of scope and the
more proper place for standardizing it would be IETF.

Whether I would recommend that someone should work on enhancing IAPP
implementations is a question for which I don't have a clear answer at
the moment. The first step would probably be more in defining what needs
to be transferred between APs (and/or other components of the network
management). This could then be possible transferred with IAPP or some
other context transfer protocol.

I believe IETF is currently working on this area. Which protocol to use
would also depend on what you are trying to do and what kind of
expectations there are about interoperability with other implementations
and likelyhood of the chosen protocol being in use at some point in the
future.

>       3.Would like to know, if IAPP is not to be continued, then what are the issues which instigates this decision.

IAPP is not really very useful by itself. It is just providing a
mechanism for sending out abstract date between APs. Someone would need
to specify what to send before this can be used.

>       4. I somehow didn't find Developer mailing list for IAPP.!

If the answer for question 1 is "no", would this be so surprising? ;-)

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA