Re: background scanning, like Windows XP?

In message: <[email protected]>
            Kevin Lahey <[email protected]> writes:
: On Thu, 29 Aug 2002 17:57:29 -0600 (MDT)
: "M. Warner Losh" <[email protected]> wrote:
: 
: > In message: <[email protected]>
: >             Kevin Lahey <[email protected]> writes:
: > : What am I missing?  Is there some secret incantation to get
: > : this to work?  Does it work on FreeBSD or OpenBSD, and I've
: > : just been too dim to notice?
: > 
: > FreeBSD has off-line scanning only. [...] Prism2 firmware, as documented,
: > doesn't seem to support this.  
: 
: Ahh, that was my chief concern.  I don't have the Prism2 docs, so I was
: hoping there was just some magic RID that would do it.

There kinda is, and I'll be the first to admit I've not read it as
closely as I'd like, so maybe I missed something.

: > I should note that in hostap mode that you see all
: > beacons for all channels.  I've not looked into why this might be
: > (since in debug mode on FreeBSD you see every beacon, even for those
: > APs that aren't on the same channel).  Maybe windows just puts the
: > card into promiscuous (or hostap) mode for a bit and then waits a few
: > hundreds of milliseconds for all the beacons to come in.
: 
: I noticed that while playing with the different Linux host AP stuff.
: I had presumed that the APs beaconed only on their own channels,
: but I guess maybe they'll beacon elsewhere as well?  Or do they somehow
: splat the beacon across multiple channels?
: 
: In any case, thanks for the pointers.  I'll try to see what I can
: figure out!

I don't know why.  I just noticed that the beacons appeared.  I've not
checked the standard, but I had planned on adding something to
FreeBSD's hostap stuff to keep track of nearby APs.  I know that Linux
does some stuff with the AP <-> AP protocols.  I think that the host
scan stuff in the prism2 (and lucent cards) just makes it easy to look
for becons on all the channels.  Again, I've not given things more
than a cursory look when I was integrating the scanning code from
airtools.

Warner

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