WBA/IETF Connect-Info Implementation under way

[Jouni Malinen]

On Mon, Oct 06, 2025 at 10:28:29AM -0600, Joey Padden wrote:
> We are implementing Wi-Fi Quality metrics in RADIUS AVP 77 Connect-Info following the WBA Access Network Metrics group and IETF draft linked here.
> 
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-grayson-connectinfo/  

> Initial investigation suggests we’ll be editing the following files primarily for metric collection and aggregation functions. We expect this work to produce a PR for hostapd project in approximately 1 month. 
> 
> src/wifi_stats/wifi_stats.c
> src/wifi_stats/wifi_stats.h

Those files do not exist in hostap.git, so I'm not sure what this part
is about..

> other small changes in other files to integrate it to hostapd config and radius functions.

That sounds more applicable to the upstream project..

> Wanted to share here to solicit any input / collaborators while we develop this. Also want to know if we are duplicating any effort as we start… not after a month of effort. 

If this is really expected to be a month of effort, I'm not sure what
exactly this would include since implementing a reasonable subset of
what is defined in the referenced draft would sound more like something
that would need an hour or two to implement in hostapd.. Maybe I'm
missing something here about the scope of work especially with those
references to wifi_stats.c.

I'd recommend working in smaller pieces and sending out contributions
when each such piece is complete if this is indeed going to be a month
of effort.. I'd start with the WIFIGEN extensions and use of
WFA-GEN-NAME. That's something I can easily see justifiable for the
Connect-Info attribute.

It is quite a bit more difficult understand why the Connect-Info
attribute would be an appropriate location overall channel conditions
like RSSI and noise and even some of the per-device specific items like
TxBitRate/RxBitRate to report TX/RX rate of a single frame (and also
noting that TX retries of a single frame might use different rates) do
not feel like something I would add into this RADIUS attribute. If you
are planning to contribute support for those, I'd suggest leaving those
to the end of the set of patches since the likelihood of getting those
accepted is quite a bit smaller than the items that I can understand
making sense in this particular RADIUS attribute.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA