On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 11:09 PM, Curtis Larsen <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 8:02 PM, Jouni Malinen
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Fri, 2010-03-26 at 16:16 -0700, Pavel Roskin wrote:
>>> I confirm that scan_freq is accepted by the current wpa_supplicant but
>>> has no reliable effect.  Both ath5k and ath9k connected to an AP on the
>>> channel 6 when "scan_freq=2412" was in the configuration file.
>>
>> scan_freq is not supposed to limit the association to specific channels;
>> it is only to limit scan requests made by wpa_supplicant. You may still
>> find BSSes on other channels either due to scan requests made by other
>> programs or by receiving Beacon/Probe Response frames on another
>> channel.
>>
>> If there is interest for limiting the association to specific channels,
>> it should be trivial addition to wpa_supplicant (with nl80211).
>
> Wireless vendors have started to realize the problem here and have
> begun implementing features to help.  An example from the latest Cisco
> Controller configuration guide for 802.11n AP's:
>
> ...Configuring Band Selection
>
> The 2.4-GHz band is often congested. Clients on this band typically
> experience interference from Bluetooth devices, microwave ovens, and
> cordless phones as well as co-channel interference from other access
> points because of the 802.11b/g limit of three non-overlapping
> channels. To combat these sources of interference and improve overall
> network performance, controller software release 6.0 enables you to
> configure band selection on the controller. This feature enables
> client radios that are capable of dual-band (2.4- and 5-GHz) operation
> to move to a less congested 5-GHz access point...
>
>> I don't
>> know whether I would fully agree on this being a useful thing for
>> general use, but I can understand it at least as a testing tool
>
> Yes, how can one accurately simulate an end user problem when their
> client is on a different band than yours and you have no control over
> which band your client lands on.
>
>>(which
>> people may then misuse for other things ;-).
>
> Years ago Intel (and I think some Broadcom) made that same decision
> with many of their Windows drivers, and now recently Microsoft with
> Vista and Windows 7 thought it was important enough to at least have
> the option.  Agreed ...it is not on the first page of the
> configuration, but it is an option for those of us looking hard enough
> to find it.
>
> ...Especially if it is "trivial" ...please consider adding.  For me,
> it's the only reason I occasionally have to boot Windows.

In case anyone else reads this thread... this feature is added in the
current development tree.  Thanks to Jouni I was able to get it
working on ubuntu 9.10 by doing the following:

1- git clone git://w1.fi/srv/git/hostap.git
2- cd /home/clarsen/hostap/wpa_supplicant
3- copy defconfig to .config, then edit .config to enable nl80211 driver.
4 - Type make ...(this failed on first try and gave an error that
something libdevel or some thing I can't remember was missing
5- Installed missing lib-devel package.
6- Typed make again - this time it finished compiling all the way through.
7- Added "freq_list =5825" to network config block
8- Typed sudo ./wpa_supplicant -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/WIFI.conf -i
wlan0 -D nl80211 -d
9- Successfully connected to 5ghz radio as desired - (prior to this
feature my client always chose 2.4Ghz).


I can see in the wpa_supplicant output that shows it is *skipping* the
"WIFI" SSID in the 2.4Ghz band:

0: 00:20:a6:49:a5:cb ssid='WIFI' wpa_ie_len=22 rsn_ie_len=0 caps=0x431
   selected based on WPA IE
   skip - frequency not allowed
1: 00:20:a6:49:a5:ca ssid='WIFI' wpa_ie_len=22 rsn_ie_len=0 caps=0x411
   selected based on WPA IE
   selected WPA AP 00:20:a6:49:a5:ca ssid='WIFI'


So ...it seems to work great now!


Thanks,

Curtis
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