Bug 8917

Summary:	Wireless lan modules/stack lacks MII support
Product:	Networking	Reporter:	Rene Bartsch (rene)
Component:	Wireless	Assignee:	John W. Linville (linville)
Status:	REJECTED INVALID
Severity:	low
Priority:	P1
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Kernel Version:	2.6.*	Subsystem:
Regression:	---	Bisected commit-id:

Description Rene Bartsch 2007-08-21 12:07:46 UTC

Hi,

I don't know whether this is the right way to go for a feature request, so please point me to the right address if I'm wrong at bugzilla of kernel.org.


A big drawback in kernel 2.6.x is the missing MII (Media Independend Interface) support for wireless devices. Because of that it's often not possible to do link detection on wireless lan devices (e.g. necessary for the bonding module or fail-over setups).

So, please make it possible to query at least the link state by MII interface in some generic way with the new 802.11 stack.

Have Phun with Linux ;-)

Rene Bartsch

Comment 1 Stephen Hemminger 2007-09-06 07:58:18 UTC

The wireless devices should all support carrier, but the MII interface assumes a Ethernet PHY (ie MII registers). Obviously, wireless uses a completely different link access protocol than Ethernet.

Programs like network manager and bonding can use carrier to detect when link is up.