hostapd + vlans - which version of hostapd is documented?!

Ravi Govindarao RGovindarao at fortresstech.com
Thu Sep 14 08:21:10 EDT 2006


Hi All,
 We are currently using hostapd as authenticator for providing 802.1x
Authentication for Wired ports using driver=wired and also to support
8021X authentication and WPA1/WPA2 key exchange for the radio using
driver=madwifi.

For the next generation product our plan is to support VLANs on both 8
port switch and as well as on Radios by mapping SSID to VLAN. My
assumption so far was that hostapd does not require any changes to
support VLAN. Please let me know if I am wrong and should I be looking
at changing some things. 
Thanks,
Ravi..
-----Original Message-----
From: hostap-bounces+rgovindarao=fortresstech.com at shmoo.com
[mailto:hostap-bounces+rgovindarao=fortresstech.com at shmoo.com] On Behalf
Of Jouni Malinen
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 10:20 PM
To: hostap at shmoo.com
Subject: Re: hostapd + vlans - which version of hostapd is documented?!

On Wed, Sep 13, 2006 at 11:08:44PM +0400, Lev Serebryakov wrote:

>  This documentation [1] is VERY like to documentation for hostapd, but
contains many "extended" features and config keywords, whcih my version
of hostpad (0.4.8, almost latest) can not understand. And even "latest
developing version" (0.5.5) knows nothing about "multi_ssid" and things
like that. For which version is this documentation prepared?
>  Is it version, changed by Devicespace? But hostpad GPLed and I can
not find changed sources...
> 
> [1] http://www.devicescape.com/docs/wip/package_guide/pkg_hostapd.php

The current hostapd version is licensed under dual GPL+BSD license (at
licensee's choice). In addition, Devicescape happens to have a separate
license for some of the older code. In other words, there are no GPL
requirements on that version. That documentation is indeed for a
Devicescape version of hostapd and the configuration options and some of
the features do not match with the open source version.

Anyway, we are in the process of cleaning up and merging in Devicescape
changes into the open source tree. Multi-BSSID support was already
merged after v0.5.5 and I would expect multi-SSID support to follow at
some point once I get there. However, one needs to realize that these
features depend on kernel side support that is provided in the
Devicescape 802.11 stack (wireless-dev.git tree) and do not work as-is
with drivers using different 802.11 implementation (e.g., madwifi or
FreeBSD net80211-based drivers).

I would expect that the multi-BSSID case can be implemented with madwifi
and net80211 by using hostapd to control two virtual interfaces as if
they were two separate radios. Multi-SSID/VLAN support may not be
supported with other drivers (or well, I don't know of any other
publicly available implementation for it).

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA
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