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 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.
