Subject: wi IBSS mode
To: None <tech-net@netbsd.org>
From: Atsushi Onoe <onoe@sm.sony.co.jp>
List: tech-net
Date: 08/18/2002 12:37:33
I'm in vacation and I've not yet tried new wi driver.  But the description
in wi(4) looks a little bit strage to me.

|      Recent versions of Lucent and PRISM-II firmware support IBSS creation.
|      IBSS is the standard IEEE 802.11 ad-hoc mode.  In this mode, one station
|      should be configured as the IBSS ``master''.  The nwid is not ignored in
|      IBSS mode.

The IEEE 802.11 standard doesn't define 'master' for IBSS mode.  All the
node in the IBSS should speak beacon regardless the existence of other
nodes.  If two or more BSS in the same IBSS, i.e. different bssid with
the same SSID, are seen, they should be merged according to the timestamp
in the beacon.  So according to the standard, ALL the station in the IBSS
should be configured as the IBSS master.

There are bugs in IBSS creation for older Lucent firmware, and no ibss
creation mode may be workaround, just like lucent ad-hoc demo mode.

I'm not sure where these description should be put, but we should
discourage non-standard modes, since these mode cannot be enabled
for all wireless drivers.  It may also be trouble in interoperability
since there are no standard for them.

The current incompatibilities in ifconfig media options:
		wi		an		awi		ray
Infra/STA	-		-		-		-
Infra/AP	hostap		N/A		N/A		N/A
IBSS		ibss-master	adhoc		adhoc		N/A
IBSS no create	ibss		N/A		(wiconfig)	N/A
adhoc-demo	adhoc		N/A		adhoc,flag0	N/A

How should we fix?

I'd like to drop ibss/ibss-master options from mediaopt and change
the meaning of adhoc of wi driver.

Regards,

Atsushi Onoe