Design challenges & future of the Linux Wireless Stack

Like any common code, the wireless stack needs to work with a lot of very different devices from different vendors. It hasn’t always done so very well with some drivers even having to work around some aspects of the stack. I’ll use a few recent examples to explain some of the differences between devices, the resulting challenges and changes but also to show the high level of cooperation between different vendors required to reach a common implementation. I’ll also talk about how we achieve that cooperation today and what I hope can be improved in the future.

Johannes has contributed to and maintained most of the wireless stack since around 2007. He also originally designed cfg80211 and nl80211, unifying the userspace APIs for wireless. Working for Intel, Johannes also recently took over maintenance of the Intel wireless drivers. He has previously talked about bringing new features like WiFi Direct to Linux.

(cross-registering for LinuxCon -- I think it's really both technical & management aspect, Jes asked me to bring this up)