Power levels / HostAP documentation

[Henry Qian]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jean Tourrilhes [mailto:jt at bougret.hpl.hp.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 2:12 PM
> To: Henry Qian
> Cc: hostap at shmoo.com
> Subject: Re: Power levels / HostAP documentation
> 
> 
> On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 01:47:11PM -0500, Henry Qian wrote:
> > Jean,
> > 
> > What is the definition of Link Quality?  I have read Link 
> Quality in 
> > man page of iwconfig, still don't get its exactly meaning.  If I am 
> > implementing a driver, how do I present this number?  Since 
> it usually 
> > takes the form of x/y, does -y represent a noise floor?  Or it's a 
> > free expression for wifi driver to decide whatever number 
> it likes to 
> > use, so different cards might have different meaning?
> 
> 	Yes, it's a totally fuzzy number, and that's the beauty of it.
> 	If you talk about weather, you can usually say :
> 		Weather : good - fair - average - crap
> 		Temperature : 25C - 10C - 0C
> 	Signal strenght is like temperature, it has a precise 
> physical definition agreed on by everybody. Link Quality is 
> like weather quality, everyone has it's own scale.
> 	So, just decide what you think is most useful, and 
> stick it in there.
> 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > Henry
> 
> 	Jean
> 

It still would be nice to have a definitive formula for Link Quality.  To wifi driver it's a snapshot or near past average, not a forecast and it has a very limited number of link quality indicator inputs, like rssi, current transmit rate, retry counter, error counter, etc.

Henry