Re: [RFA] namespaces and vendor extensions

Johannes Berg <[email protected]> Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:08:16 +0100

Newsgroups	org.netbsd.radiotap
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

On Tue, 2009-12-01 at 09:05 -0800, Gerald Combs wrote:
> Johannes Berg wrote:
> > Joshua,
> > 
> >> For the structure of the vendor space, you extend 'skip_length' from 8
> >> bits to 16 bits.
> >>> Structure
> >>>        u8 OUI[3], u8 sub_namespace, __le16 skip_length
> 
> What happens if someone without an OUI wants to add a vendor extension?
> Do they need to purchase an OUI or IAB from the IEEE?

IABs won't work, because we only have 24 bits reserved in this proposal.

However, is there a good reason for anyone to be wanting this, apart
from hardware-specific (and thus probably being affiliated with a
vendor) information? Shouldn't almost everything else be standardised
within the regular radiotap namespace? We do have a use case on Linux,
but we also have vendor backing so we'll be using a sub-namespace for
that specific use case (and maintenance within that namespace is easy by
controlling what patches go into the source tree).

I have no interest in helping maintain a second namespace in addition to
the radiotap bit namespace, and since we do allow sub-typing, being able
to use a subtype of somebody's OUI should be possible for virtually
anyone. If somebody ends up being completely lost without one, there are
probably enough people on this list willing to assign a sub-namespace to
them.

johannes

signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, 801 B)