Re: Fwd: [Madwifi-devel] Fwd: madwifi wpa NetworkManager?

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Sun, 2006-03-12 at 16:02 -0600, Eli Criffield wrote:
> Does someone have a link to WEXT standard to help the madwifi guys
> out? Anyone want to know who they could contact to get the specs?

Almost every driver out there for Linux supports WEXT for the basics.
Madwifi probably supports these basic bits already; they include, for
example, SIOCGIWENCODE, SIOCSIWENCODE, pretty much _any_ ioctl that
starts with SIOC[S|G]IW is a WEXT one.

So where madwifi has fallen behind a bit is in the enhancements that
WEXT has made in the past year or so, in both the WEXT-18 and WEXT-19
versions of the interface.  First, WPA support has been added and
implemented by a few drivers, and other bits have been solidified.  The
bits missing are likely the WPA bits where madwifi has it's own private
ioctls.  It used to be that every driver had it's own method for setting
WPA parameters; but in the past year that has been standardised into
WEXT, and drivers now provide a WEXT-standard method for WPA.

Jean Tourrilhes <jt hpl hp com> is The Guy for Linux WEXT.

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Tools.html
/usr/include/wireless.h
wireless-tools package

The reference implementation of WPA support for WEXT are the Intel
Pro/Wireless and the hostap drivers.  These include support for the
following WEXT ioctls:

SIOCGIWAUTH
SIOCSIWAUTH
SIOCGIWENCODEEXT
SIOCSIWENCODEEXT
SIOCGIWGENIE
SIOCSIWGENIE
SIOCSIWPMKSA
SIOCSIWMLME

The other component is supporting wireless events, which are provided by
the kernel using the wireless_send_event() call in driver code.  For
example, when the card has finished scanning, it should return a
SIOCGIWSCAN event to user space, when it has associated with an access
point it should return the BSSID of that access point with an SIOCGIWAP
event, etc.

It's fairly easy to port over the support; you just have to map the
options that you get passed from the handlers you register with WEXT to
the internal driver settings.  The atmel and airo drivers contain
minimal versions of the IWENCODEEXT and IWAUTH handlers that support
WEP, but it should be pretty clear how to do these from the ipw and
hostap drivers, the kernel 802.11 layer, and the emerging 802.11
"softmac" layer.

Dan

> Eli
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Daniel Wu <dyqith gmail com>
> Date: Mar 12, 2006 3:40 PM
> Subject: Re: [Madwifi-devel] Fwd: madwifi wpa NetworkManager?
> To: Eli Criffield <elicriffield gmail com>
> Cc: madwifi-devel lists sourceforge net
> 
> 
> Is there a link to the WEXT standard ?
> Might be a good idea to put in a ticket for this.
> I would like to help, but I'm not sure what's required for this.
> 
> 
> 
> On 3/12/06, Eli Criffield <elicriffield gmail com> wrote:
> >
>  NetworkManager currently doesn't work with madwifi-ng because
> madwifi-ng doesn't correctly support linux's standard WEXT.
> 
> Is it on the to do list to fix this or is there some reason to not
> support the standard WEXT?
> 
> Eli
> 
> 
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