• Tim Harvey's avatar
    mac80211 default tx_last_beacon false (congestion) · 91f44b02
    Tim Harvey authored
    The 802.11 spec states that the STA that generated the last Beacon frame shall
    be the STA that response to a probe request.  This is important for congestion
    reduction when a probe request is received - only 1 node in an adhoc BSS
    will transmit a response.  While mac80211 drivers should provide the
    tx_last_beacon function to report if they transmitted the last beacon many
    do not.  As an attempt to reduce probe response congestion default this
    to 0 such that a node not implementing this capability does not contribute
    to unnecessary congestion.
    
    In a modern medium sized office environment I see upwards of 100 probe
    requests per second received at a given node from various hardware/OS/drivers
    doing zeroconf 'active probing' as opposed to passively listening for beacons.
    With a modest 10-node adhoc network consisting of drivers that do not implement
    this tx_last_beacon feature, I have seen this result in the simultaneous xmit
    of probe responses accumulating to 500 probe responses per second because of
    collisions which brings the adhoc network to its knees as well as causes
    needless congestion.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarJohn W. Linville <linville@tuxdriver.com>
    91f44b02
driver-ops.h 10.8 KB