From: Erik Walthinsen (omega_at_temple-baptist.com)
Date: 2002-06-05 19:26:06 UTC
On Wed, 5 Jun 2002, Jim Binkley wrote:
> I am wondering if Journi's prism2 driver or the BSD version
> could be taught to do that. This would get us back to the wonderful
> world of mostly theoretical multi-hop ad hoc routing ...
This is the mode I've been dreaming of constructing for quite a while now:
The card would probably be "primarily" IBSS mode, with modifications such as dropping RTS/CTS and if possible killing the whole stupid packet ACK thing (one of the worst layer violations I know of). On top of that it would send out fake AP beacons and handle association of "dumb" clients (stock managed mode clients, like Windows machines) a la hostapd.
All the smart nodes in such a network would then use existing and future layer-2/3 ad-hoc routing protocols, because the layer-1 network is back to simple hearability, as opposed to tyring to construct a STP-style pseudo-switched network over a highly variable backhaul (WDS). All the dumb ones just see a cluster of APs that will all claim to be the same ESSID, and therefore presumably will deal easily with a client connecting to any of them (back to the layer-2/3 routing protocol).
What I don't know is whether such a mode is possible with the firmware on the prism2 cards. Can we send and receive 'mangement' packets in IBSS mode, or some promisc equivalent?
Erik Walthinsen <omega_at_temple-baptist.com> - System Administrator
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