wi scanning reform

I've got this idea that instead of skipping from IEEE80211_S_SCAN
to IEEE80211_S_RUN, wi should send a Scan command to the firmware,
create ieee80211_nodes from the scan results, subject those to
ieee80211_end_scan, and then command the firmware to join a particular
BSSID/channel (Prism) or else choose the SSID (Lucent).

I think that this will be useful for a few reasons. One is that wi is
missing the rate sets for the AP it associates with, and the only way
I see to get the AP's rate info is by a scan. (If there is another way,
please refer me to the chapter & verse in the Prism docs.)

Another reason is that I want to get away from the old scanning interface,
which revolves around polling for wi_apinfos with ioctl (yech). In the
new interface, I want for the kernel to pass ieee80211_nodes to userland
with messages on a character device which a program can sleep on w/
poll/select/kevent. It will be handy here for wi to have ieee80211_nodes
on hand from the scan it did before joining the network, since re-scanning
is disruptive.

Yet another reason is that I think the ieee80211_nodes can help feed
an improved roaming algorithm, such as somebody might program for the
802.11 layer in the future.

Thoughts?

Dave

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