Re: Possible future wpa-supplicant behavour question
On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 04:17:58PM -0800, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
I am in the IEEE 802.11ai session. This is 'Fast Initial
Link' setup, a
new task group in 802.11.
Hi Robert,
I'm pretty interested in this, I'll follow up privately from another
account...
We are looking at how we can accelerate a number of steps in wireless
so
that people walking (or even driving) from one WiFi domain to another
will actually work. I am involved in two parts of this work. To put
security schemes into the AUTHENTICATE exchanges and IP address
assignment in the ASSOCIATE exchange.
Let's talk about the IP address assignment. A scenario would have the
ASSOCIATE REQUEST have an address request Information Element
(IE-addr-req); it would have IPv4 and IPv6 flags (so you can get either
or both back). An IPv6 IE in the ASSOCIATION RESPONSE would look like
an IPv6 RA packet. An IPv4 IE would look like a DHCP response packet.
This would be pasted up to that kernel in the MLME-MAC-Response, before
Link establishment.
Here is the question:
Could the kernel accept and handle this information without the Link
being up?
If I understand you right, this would be more or less like an
inline (or in-negotiation) method for address resolution. I don't think
it would be particularly difficult to add this support to the softmac
code.
Given the speed of standards work, we have a couple years to get this
working :)
Potentially by the next 802.11 meeting at the end of March, I could have
diagrams of what the ASSOCIATION frames would look like and it would be
really great if someone could actually code up a working implementation
for Proof of Concept. I am NOT a programmer.
Oh, putting a security exchange in the AUTHENTICATION is on the table as
well. I am personally pushing HIP, but we will parametrise it for also
IKEv2 and 802.1X to establish the WPA MSK, PTK, and GTK (these are the
various keys used in WPA).
Oh you can see the various presentation on 802.11ai by going to:
https://mentor.ieee.org/802.11/documents
and selecting TGai for the currrent efforts and FIA SG for the study
group efforts
https://mentor.ieee.org/802.11/dcn/10/11-10-1146-00-0fia-feasible-exchang...
is a presentation I made back in September showing some feasible exchanges.
Thanks, should be interesting reading.
--Kyle