Bug 546281 - wireless: report reasonable bitrate for MCS rates through wext
Summary: wireless: report reasonable bitrate for MCS rates through wext
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED ERRATA
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
Classification: Red Hat
Component: kernel
Version: 5.5
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
low
medium
Target Milestone: rc
: ---
Assignee: John W. Linville
QA Contact: Red Hat Kernel QE team
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks: 526948
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2009-12-10 15:44 UTC by John W. Linville
Modified: 2010-03-30 07:44 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2010-03-30 07:44:43 UTC
Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)
0001-wireless-report-reasonable-bitrate-for-MCS-rates-th.patch (4.43 KB, patch)
2009-12-10 15:44 UTC, John W. Linville
no flags Details | Diff


Links
System ID Private Priority Status Summary Last Updated
Red Hat Product Errata RHSA-2010:0178 0 normal SHIPPED_LIVE Important: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 kernel security and bug fix update 2010-03-29 12:18:21 UTC

Description John W. Linville 2009-12-10 15:44:09 UTC
Created attachment 377485 [details]
0001-wireless-report-reasonable-bitrate-for-MCS-rates-th.patch

802.11n connections report bitrates using a different system than earlier 802.11 standards.  As a results, the naive approach to reporting such bitrates through the wireless extensions interface (used by iwconfig and other tools) was to simply return 0 for the bitrate.

This uninformative situation has led to a number of bug reports upstream and in Fedora, but these have mostly been ignored partly due to lack of a better solution and partly as a way to encourage people to use the newer iw tool.  However, the iw tool is not available in RHEL5 and there are no plans to add it.  Further, infrastructure has been added to support nl80211 that can now be used to support wireless extensions in reporting more useful numbers as well.  The patch moves some code around, but the actual meat of the fix is only a few lines.

Previous versions of RHEL5 have not dealt with MCS rates, so failure to include this fix (and therefore reporting bitrates of "0") will be seen as a regression by many customers...

Comment 1 RHEL Program Management 2009-12-10 15:51:40 UTC
This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for inclusion in a Red
Hat Enterprise Linux maintenance release.  Product Management has requested
further review of this request by Red Hat Engineering, for potential
inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Update release for currently deployed
products.  This request is not yet committed for inclusion in an Update
release.

Comment 6 Don Zickus 2009-12-15 20:19:56 UTC
in kernel-2.6.18-181.el5
You can download this test kernel from http://people.redhat.com/dzickus/el5

Please update the appropriate value in the Verified field
(cf_verified) to indicate this fix has been successfully
verified. Include a comment with verification details.

Comment 12 errata-xmlrpc 2010-03-30 07:44:43 UTC
An advisory has been issued which should help the problem
described in this bug report. This report is therefore being
closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information
on therefore solution and/or where to find the updated files,
please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report
if the solution does not work for you.

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2010-0178.html


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