WLAN status update
Werner Almesberger
werner at openmoko.org
Mon Jan 12 10:07:06 CET 2009
Andy Green wrote:
> It seems like it is turning off ieee80211 powersaving mode (the AP
> beacon dropbox system) in order to have that kind of impact.
You mean the synchronized wakeups ? Yes, it could be that.
> I don't think rfkill itself has much expectation except to stop the
> transmission action. It doesn't care how we're doing that or what
> residual power is pulled at DC.
The expectations are as follows:
- explicitly, it has to be bullet-proof. rfkill attempts to achieve
this reliability through simplicity (i.e., just "throw a switch"),
but our interface to the firmware is way more abstract.
- in the discussion on linux-wireless, Michael Buesch also mentioned
that rfkill is expected to act "immediately".
- implicitly, rfkill is also not expected to mess up any other
configuration, but the documentation doesn't state this (yet).
This follows naturally if you assume that what you have is a simple
switch, but if you don't, these are not trivial semantics. (I.e.,
the closes thing the original Atheros code has, --wlan disable,
does interfere with concurrent configuration.)
> Sure it's a hack. But, it is simple to explain to a user with the issue
> in the meanwhile.
Yup. I'm glad that we have a work-around at all. It's just not the
end of the story.
- Werner
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