Oh it is fun. :) +a On Sep 8, 2014 10:54 PM, "Kevin Lo" <ke...@freebsd.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 01, 2014 at 11:11:20AM -0700, Adrian Chadd wrote: > > > > The problem -is- the money. The people will come when there's enough > > interest and enough money. > > > > The problem is that people think things like wifi drivers that are > > debugged, perform well and get updated as new standards appear is a > > few months effort - and I think the herculean efforts done in the past > > by people like Sam fuel this myth. > > > > I've spent almost two years of weekends and evenings hacking on > > net80211 and the atheros driver to get it to where it is. The 11n > > support for atheros chips appeared when someone (hi Hobnob!) paid me > > for six months to get 11n done. I'm still debugging weird corner cases > > with rate control and congestion handling even now. And this is _on > > top_ of all the work done by the Atheros team to write the HAL in the > > first place. > > > > I've spent almost 18 months of weekends/evenings hacking on the intel > > iwn driver to find all the little odd corner cases that make it > > unusable by a lot of people. I keep saying I'm not, but since the > > laptops I'm using have iwn in them, I end up getting annoyed enough to > > fix it. This has all been for free. > > > > Wireless stuff is a very complicated, very time consuming thing that's > > immensely fun if you're into this kind of thing. But please understand > > - it's a huge time commitment for each individual device and new > > standard. > > > > So yes, it's the money. I've jokingly said that it's $100k and 2 years > > for me in (evenings, weekends) time and equipment to port and debug > > one driver for a given NIC. Not just do a "oh look here's an openbsd > > driver ported from linux in a month" port - that's just the beginning > > (and I tend to quote something like $10k for that) - I mean, something > > that ends up implementing the updated standards (11n, 11ac soon); > > something that includes powersave, something that includes debugging, > > something that handles a multitude of bad environments that people see > > every day and complain about. Ie - the level of work that makes it "oh > > it just works, I can get on with work now" level of work. > > > > I don't want to let myself be dragged into another two years of > > weekends. I kind of need some sleep here and there. > > I can't find a reason why I disagree with you. > I have almost forgotten that wifi hacking can be fun if it results > in something working... > > > -a > > Kevin > _______________________________________________ freebsd-wireless@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-wireless To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-wireless-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
