Nokia's WiMAX implementation

[Dan Williams]

On Tue, 2008-12-02 at 09:52 +0200, juuso.oikarinen at nokia.com wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Some time ago, a colleague of mine, Luciano Coelho, opened a
> discussion with this same subject. I think it is time now for me to
> continue that discussion, because our aim, like that of Intel's, is to
> achieve a unified WiMAX driver interface for Linux. For reference, the
> original posting is archived in
> http://linuxwimax.org/pipermail/wimax/2008-June/000028.html.
> 
> As Luca explains in his e-mail, the Nokia architechture is different
> from the approach taken by Intel. 
> - The Nokia architechture places the device independent WiMAX
> interface at the kernel/user-space barrier, so that all user-space
> components are independent of the WiMAX device. 
> 
> - The Intel architechture places the device independent WiMAX
> interface on top of a user-space library, so that in the
> kernel/user-space barrier, essentially, chipset specific messages are
> exchanged.
> 
> In the original posting, Luciano stated that the Nokia driver sources
> are not publicized yet. This has now changed. For reference, please
> see the Maemo.org repository at
> http://repository.maemo.org/pool/maemo4.1/free/k/kernel-source-diablo/
> 
> The Nokia driver currently implements the WiMAX methods as private
> extensions to the WLAN wireless events interface. Obviously, for a
> long term solution fixed messages would need to be defined. Still,
> the 

Yeah, that's not going to work upstream, which is where we eventually
want this to go...  I think a fusion of the Intel and Nokia approaches
is the best direction; taking the netlink communication approach from
the Intel drivers, and the device-independence (and supplicant
communication approach) from the Nokia drivers.

Basically, WE is dead dead dead, and should no longer be used under any
circumstances.  A specific WiMAX netlink communications system should be
used, like Intel has done.  But there are still concerns upstream with
the device-specificity of the kernel/userspace API as Intel has written
it.

I guess you guys just rewrote the Intel drivers, or wrote new drivers
from scratch for the 2400 hardware?

Dan

> methods defined in the interface have been proven to work on a real
> product, and could serve as good reference defining a device
> independent WiMAX driver interface for Linux.
> 
> It is my personal feeling that the Nokia approach is closer to what is
> intended by the driver model in operating systems, such as Linux. 
> 
> 
> Juuso Oikarinen
> 
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