Subject: Re: [PATCH wpan-next 1/6] ieee802154: Add support for user scanning requests

From: Miquel Raynal <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2023 14:57:56 +0100

Hi Alexander,

[email-masked] wrote on Mon, 20 Feb 2023 21:54:41 -0500:

> Hi,
> 
> On Fri, Feb 17, 2023 at 3:53 AM Miquel Raynal <[email-masked]> wrote:
> ...
> > >
> > > ok, I am curious. Probably it is very driver/device specific but yea,
> > > HardMAC needs to at least support what 802.15.4 says, the rest is
> > > optional and result in -ENOTSUPP?  
> >
> > TBH this is still a gray area in my mental model. I'm not sure what
> > these devices will really offer in terms of interfaces.  
> 
> ca8210 is one. They use those SAP-commands (MCPS-SAP and MLME-SAP)
> which are described by 802.15.4 spec... there is this cfg802154_ops
> structure which will redirect netlink to either SoftMAC or HardMAC it
> should somehow conform to this...

Absolutely.

> However I think it should be the minimum functionality inside of this,
> there might be a lot of optional things which only SoftMAC supports.
> Also nl802154 should be oriented to this.
> 
> Are you agreeing here?

Yes. That support can also be improved if we ever have to support
advanced functionalities with "new" and compatible HardMAC devices.

Thanks,
Miquèl