wlan_ratectl (was Re: firmware discussion)

[Rui Paulo <rpaulo@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 30 Mar 2010, at 16:27, Sascha Wildner wrote:

> Am 30.03.2010 16:23, schrieb Rui Paulo:
>> I'm unhappy with the ratectl stuff, really. I think it needs to be rewritten to cope with the changes to the ratectl algorithms from FreeBSD. The other route would be to ditch wlan_ratectl and keep everything in sync with FreeBSD.
> 
> Rui,
> 
> what would the latter route imply exactly?

rm -rf wlan_ratectl. :-)

> 
> As far as I know wlan_ratectl(4) is currently working with almost all of our wlan drivers. Would ditching it and going with FreeBSD's code exclusively allow for that still in some way?

No. But all the drivers need to be ported again from FreeBSD because of the net80211 stack update anyway. Keeping wlan_ratectl means:
1) port the drivers from FreeBSD
2) adapt the drivers to use wlan_ratectl

We can probably do this (again), but this work will be useless if in 3 years from now the DragonFly network stack is outdated WRT to FreeBSD.

Keeping the code in sync with FreeBSD means that in 3 years from now it will be easier to update DragonFly's wireless stack.

This is a classical open source dilemma, actually (no maintainer).

--
Rui Paulo