Summary Info on Current Status for 802.11 Devicescape Stack

(Slides version of this document is available as a PDF attachment:"80211dscapestack.pdf"​.)

Devicescape Inc. Summary

• Wi-Fi software specialist Instant80211 has renamed itself ​Devicescape Software Inc. in Feb. 2005.
• Devicescape mainly sells Universal Wireless Platform (UWP) product which includes
  • Linux kernel
  • Devicescape wireless subsystem (a device-independent IEEE 802.11 software core)
  • An Eclipse based integrated development environment (Devicescape Studio)& command-based development environment.
  • Wireless-specific tools for the 802.11 subsystem
  • GNU toolchain
  • Build scripts and makefiles
• UWP supports Atheros (AR5213), Broadcom (BCM4306/4309/4320), Conexant radios.

Architecture Diagram for Devicescape Inc. UWP

Summary on Linux 802.11 stack situation

• There exists a wireless-2.6 tree on ​http://kernel.org maintained by John Linville. Upcoming in-kernel stack/drivers will be pushed upwards (to Linus) via this tree.
• There are two candidate stacks on the tree:
  • ​softmac stack: based on the current ieee80211 stack in the kernel with improvements+recent patches.
  • devicescape (a.k.a dscape, or d80211) stack: is another stack written and recently GPL'ed by Devicescape Inc.
• Although devicescape has some advantages in functionality (like full WPA support), softmac is likely to be merged into upstream due to some issues in stability, compatibility etc.
• Both stacks seem to stay under concurrent development (at least for a while)

Functions Supported at d80211 stack

• Obvious Functions : various send/receive and their lower/higer layer interfaces etc.
• BSS join/scan
• 802.11e/WMM parameter set handling, and packet→queue classification
• (De)authentication
• Encryption (wep, wpa, tkip/aes)
• IBSS create/find/join/merge
• Basic stat/info dump to /proc
• A simple rate control algorithm
• Interface for HostAPd

Devicescape stack is accessible from ​http://kernel.org/git as a git project named 'wireless-dev'.