upper layer(s).
This eliminates the if_snd queue from net80211. Yay!
This unfortunately has a few side effects:
* It breaks ALTQ to net80211 for now - sorry everyone, but fixing
parallelism and eliminating the if_snd queue is more important
than supporting this broken traffic scheduling model. :-)
* There's no VAP and IC flush methods just yet - I think I'll add
some NULL methods for now just as placeholders.
* It reduces throughput a little because now net80211 will drop packets
rather than buffer them if the driver doesn't do its own buffering.
This will be addressed in the future as I implement per-node software
queues.
Tested:
* ath(4) and iwn(4) in STA operation
This patchset implements a new TX lock, covering both the per-VAP (and
thus per-node) TX locking and the serialisation through to the underlying
physical device.
This implements the hard requirement that frames to the underlying physical
device are scheduled to the underlying device in the same order that they
are processed at the VAP layer. This includes adding extra encapsulation
state (such as sequence numbers and CCMP IV numbers.) Any order mismatch
here will result in dropped packets at the receiver.
There are multiple transmit contexts from the upper protocol layers as well
as the "raw" interface via the management and BPF transmit paths.
All of these need to be correctly serialised or bad behaviour will result
under load.
The specifics:
* add a new TX IC lock - it will eventually just be used for serialisation
to the underlying physical device but for now it's used for both the
VAP encapsulation/serialisation and the physical device dispatch.
This lock is specifically non-recursive.
* Methodize the parent transmit, vap transmit and ic_raw_xmit function
pointers; use lock assertions in the parent/vap transmit routines.
* Add a lock assertion in ieee80211_encap() - the TX lock must be held
here to guarantee sensible behaviour.
* Refactor out the packet sending code from ieee80211_start() - now
ieee80211_start() is just a loop over the ifnet queue and it dispatches
each VAP packet send through ieee80211_start_pkt().
Yes, I will likely rename ieee80211_start_pkt() to something that
better reflects its status as a VAP packet transmit path. More on
that later.
* Add locking around the management and BAR TX sending - to ensure that
encapsulation and TX are done hand-in-hand.
* Add locking in the mesh code - again, to ensure that encapsulation
and mesh transmit are done hand-in-hand.
* Add locking around the power save queue and ageq handling, when
dispatching to the parent interface.
* Add locking around the WDS handoff.
* Add a note in the mesh dispatch code that the TX path needs to be
re-thought-out - right now it's doing a direct parent device transmit
rather than going via the vap layer. It may "work", but it's likely
incorrect (as it bypasses any possible per-node power save and
aggregation handling.)
Why not a per-VAP or per-node lock?
Because in order to ensure per-VAP ordering, we'd have to hold the
VAP lock across parent->if_transmit(). There are a few problems
with this:
* There's some state being setup during each driver transmit - specifically,
the encryption encap / CCMP IV setup. That should eventually be dragged
back into the encapsulation phase but for now it lives in the driver TX path.
This should be locked.
* Two drivers (ath, iwn) re-use the node->ni_txseqs array in order to
allocate sequence numbers when doing transmit aggregation. This should
also be locked.
* Drivers may have multiple frames queued already - so when one calls
if_transmit(), it may end up dispatching multiple frames for different
VAPs/nodes, each needing a different lock when handling that particular
end destination.
So to be "correct" locking-wise, we'd end up needing to grab a VAP or
node lock inside the driver TX path when setting up crypto / AMPDU sequence
numbers, and we may already _have_ a TX lock held - mostly for the same
destination vap/node, but sometimes it'll be for others. That could lead
to LORs and thus deadlocks.
So for now, I'm sticking with an IC TX lock. It has the advantage of
papering over the above and it also has the added advantage that I can
assert that it's being held when doing a parent device transmit.
I'll look at splitting the locks out a bit more later on.
General outstanding net80211 TX path issues / TODO:
* Look into separating out the VAP serialisation and the IC handoff.
It's going to be tricky as parent->if_transmit() doesn't give me the
opportunity to split queuing from driver dispatch. See above.
* Work with monthadar to fix up the mesh transmit path so it doesn't go via
the parent interface when retransmitting frames.
* Push the encryption handling back into the driver, if it's at all
architectually sane to do so. I know it's possible - it's what mac80211
in Linux does.
* Make ieee80211_raw_xmit() queue a frame into VAP or parent queue rather
than doing a short-cut direct into the driver. There are QoS issues
here - you do want your management frames to be encapsulated and pushed
onto the stack sooner than the (large, bursty) amount of data frames
that are queued. But there has to be a saner way to do this.
* Fragments are still broken - drivers need to be upgraded to an if_transmit()
implementation and then fragmentation handling needs to be properly fixed.
Tested:
* STA - AR5416, AR9280, Intel 5300 abgn wifi
* Hostap - AR5416, AR9160, AR9280
* Mesh - some testing by monthadar@, more to come.
save queue code.
Instead, use if_transmit() directly - and handle the cases where frame
transmission fails.
I don't necessarily like this and I think at this point the M_ENCAP check,
node freeing upon fail and the actual if_transmit() call should be done
in methods in ieee80211_freebsd.c, but I digress slightly..
This removes one of the last few uses of if_start() and the ifnet
if_snd queue. The last major offender is ieee80211_output.c, where
ieee80211_start() implements if_start() and uses the ifnet queue
directly.
(There's a couple of gotchas here, where the if_start pointer is
compared to ieee80211_start(), but that's a later problem.)
This turns ieee80211_node_pwrsave(), ieee80211_sta_pwrsave() and
ieee80211_recv_pspoll() into methods.
The intent is to let drivers override these and tie into the power save
management pathway.
For ath(4), this is the beginning of forcing a node software queue to
stop and start as needed, as well as supporting "leaking" single frames
from the software queue to the hardware.
Right now, ieee80211_recv_pspoll() will attempt to transmit a single frame
to the hardware (whether it be a data frame on the power-save queue or
a NULL data frame) but the driver may have hardware/software queued frames
queued up. This initial work is an attempt at providing the hooks required
to implement correct behaviour.
Allowing ieee80211_node_pwrsave() to be overridden allows the ath(4)
driver to pause and unpause the entire software queue for a given node.
It doesn't make sense to transmit anything whilst the node is asleep.
Please note that there are other corner cases to correctly handle -
specifically, setting the MORE data bit correctly on frames to a station,
as well as keeping the TIM updated. Those particular issues can be
addressed later.
Note this includes changes to all drivers and moves some device firmware
loading to use firmware(9) and a separate module (e.g. ral). Also there
no longer are separate wlan_scan* modules; this functionality is now
bundled into the wlan module.
Supported by: Hobnob and Marvell
Reviewed by: many
Obtained from: Atheros (some bits)
o add driver callback to handle notification of beacon changes;
this is required for devices that manage beacon frames themselves
(devices must override the default handler which does nothing)
o move beacon update-related flags from ieee80211com to the beacon
offsets storage (or handle however a driver wants)
o expand beacon offsets structure with members needed for 11h/dfs
and appie's
o change calling convention for ieee80211_beacon_alloc and
ieee80211_beacon_update
o add overlapping bss support for 11g; requires driver to pass
beacon frames from overlapping bss up to net80211 which is not
presently done by any driver
o move HT beacon contents update to a routine in the HT code area
Reviewed by: avatar, thompsa, sephe
Approved by: re (blanket wireless)
o major overhaul of the way channels are handled: channels are now
fully enumerated and uniquely identify the operating characteristics;
these changes are visible to user applications which require changes
o make scanning support independent of the state machine to enable
background scanning and roaming
o move scanning support into loadable modules based on the operating
mode to enable different policies and reduce the memory footprint
on systems w/ constrained resources
o add background scanning in station mode (no support for adhoc/ibss
mode yet)
o significantly speedup sta mode scanning with a variety of techniques
o add roaming support when background scanning is supported; for now
we use a simple algorithm to trigger a roam: we threshold the rssi
and tx rate, if either drops too low we try to roam to a new ap
o add tx fragmentation support
o add first cut at 802.11n support: this code works with forthcoming
drivers but is incomplete; it's included now to establish a baseline
for other drivers to be developed and for user applications
o adjust max_linkhdr et. al. to reflect 802.11 requirements; this eliminates
prepending mbufs for traffic generated locally
o add support for Atheros protocol extensions; mainly the fast frames
encapsulation (note this can be used with any card that can tx+rx
large frames correctly)
o add sta support for ap's that beacon both WPA1+2 support
o change all data types from bsd-style to posix-style
o propagate noise floor data from drivers to net80211 and on to user apps
o correct various issues in the sta mode state machine related to handling
authentication and association failures
o enable the addition of sta mode power save support for drivers that need
net80211 support (not in this commit)
o remove old WI compatibility ioctls (wicontrol is officially dead)
o change the data structures returned for get sta info and get scan
results so future additions will not break user apps
o fixed tx rate is now maintained internally as an ieee rate and not an
index into the rate set; this needs to be extended to deal with
multi-mode operation
o add extended channel specifications to radiotap to enable 11n sniffing
Drivers:
o ath: add support for bg scanning, tx fragmentation, fast frames,
dynamic turbo (lightly tested), 11n (sniffing only and needs
new hal)
o awi: compile tested only
o ndis: lightly tested
o ipw: lightly tested
o iwi: add support for bg scanning (well tested but may have some
rough edges)
o ral, ural, rum: add suppoort for bg scanning, calibrate rssi data
o wi: lightly tested
This work is based on contributions by Atheros, kmacy, sephe, thompsa,
mlaier, kevlo, and others. Much of the scanning work was supported by
Atheros. The 11n work was supported by Marvell.
