Centralized WLAN Management Application/Framework

[Daniel Bertolo]

Hi

We are currently writing our diploma thesis about centralized WLAN. As we use 
and would like to modify HostAP, I am writing to this mailing list in order 
to get feedback. Our project is hosted at http://sf.net/projects/cwlan .

We inteded to implement the following parts:

- Centralized WLAN Management Application: This web application consits of a 
frontend written in OO-Javascript using the Qooxdoo framework (see 
http://qooxdoo.org) as well as a backend written in PHP. The backend handles 
the needed config files (e.g. hostapd.conf).

- Runtime Environment: Our runtime environment consists of the server running 
the management application as well as a numer of access points (using WRAP 
boards with Atheros-based MiniPCI cards, see pcengines.ch). On the APs we 
installed Voyage Linux devel version (based on Debian Etch). The APs mount 
their config files from the server using SSH-FS (FUSE).

- Modifying HostAP: This modification should make the access points to thin 
access points. The main idea is to make the APs stupid doing nothing else but 
sending unmodified wireless frames through a tunnel to the server where again 
HostAP will do the rest (namely authentication). Like this, WLAN users could 
change the associated AP without re-authenticating. This would for example 
enhance VoIP on a WLAN. There has already been another project hosted on 
http://www.wrapper.ch that did this for the Prism-2/2.5 driver. As this was a 
proof-of-concept, we would like to implement (or initiate an implementation) 
of a general solution that would work with any driver.

The first two parts are quite usable. We plan to finish them by the end of 
next week (our diploma thesis will be finished on December 15). But the 
HostAP part is too much for our project. But anyway, it would be nice if we 
could present a possible solution of how HostAP could be extended. And we 
plan to continue on our project after December 15. Like that, we could really 
develop a usable open source centralized WLAN infrastructure.

I am looking forward to getting a lot of feedback.

Best,
Dani