Re: virtual wireless interfaces / WDS

On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 02:53:10AM -0700, Matt Peterson wrote:
> WDS doesn't seem to scale well after 2 hops, also based on past f/w issues, 
> it would also seem difficult to support on multiple chipsets.  Currently, 
> FreeBSD's bridge lacks STP ;\  It would seem something along the lines of 
> GSPR or another mobile-engineered protocol would be more useful; WDS seems 
> like an 802.11 "oops" (like static WEP keys).  Ideally in Zebra or GateD, 
> CWN's are turning into geek club OS religious wars.

  I'm not sure what you're saying here.  Do you mean STP breaks after 2
  hops?  Certainly STP is no good for a very elaborate or dynamic network.

  I think WDS will probably not see much application outside of
  bridging two workgroups in the same office building or in different
  office buildings, where it is oftentimes desirable to have layer-2
  connectivity. This is an interesting enough application for me to want
  to program it.
  
> As already stated, unique MACs would need to get a consistent sta#.

  Right. I think it is important to reach some consensus on how to solve
  this problem before programming begins. Here is my proposal.

  1 Let an operator or a daemon pre-create a sta with or without
    a STA's MAC pre-assigned.

  2 Give each 802.11 device (e.g., wi) a flag that permits/forbids
    creating additional stas on demand.

  3 Preserve the (MAC, unit number) relationship for every pre-created sta
    forever.

  4 For a sta that is created on demand, only preserve the (MAC, unit
    number) relationship for some user-settable time-out period. Let
    two of the time-out periods be 0 and infinity.

  5 Let a flag in the 802.11 device (e.g., wi) tell whether STA
    (dis)association is indicated by adding/deleting a sta or by twiddling
    a sta's media status.

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
[email protected]      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933
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