Re: Roadmap question

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Tue, 2007-01-23 at 09:25 -0800, Shane Bryan wrote:
> I've searched the archives and not seen the topic I am curious about,
> so here goes...
> 
> Does NM have plans (near or far) to also manage connections to
> WiMax/WMAN (802.16) networks and/or Digital Cellular (aka WWAN)
> networks? 

Both; but certainly cellular before WiMAX.  What the cell bits require
is the integrated PPP support, which we're working on.

I'd really like to support WiMAX in the future too, but we'll need quite
a few things before that happens.  First, we need to know what the
interface to the card looks like.  Second, how much of the stack will be
running in firmware versus how much will be running on the host.  Third,
how to tune various things that might need tuning, and fourth, we need
drivers for WiMAX cards :)

Companies like Sprint have committed to "mobile" WiMAX (802.16e) as
their 4G cellular standard, and I would like to support them in the same
manner as I'd like to support current GSM/CDMA cellular cards.

> I've seen recent announcements of WiMax deployments in the Portland,
> OR area and other places around the world, and was curious if these
> wireless networks (in the functional sense of the word) were
> considered in scope for what NM is designed for, or is this lower
> level than NM ( i.e. does it need to be implimented in wireless tools
> or dscape or ???)?

Well, WiMAX bits would certainly require a configuration interface of
some kind to be able to receive stuff like strength and maybe other
tunables.  But GSM/CDMA cards get away without this sort of thing
because they simply present a serial interface that you can dial and
talk PPP over.

> If not NM, is anyone aware of other projects or companies working on
> WiMax and WWAN connection manager/configuration tools similar to what
> NM is doing for WLAN? 

The plan is to support the wider-area regulated frequency networks in
much the same way as WLANs are right now, with the caveat that they
never connect automatically unless you tell the configuration to do so,
unlike current WLAN devices.

Dan