Allow over-riding regdomain in NIC when CFG80211_CERTIFICATION_ONUS is enabled?

There are out-of-tree patches for ath9k (at least) that allow overriding the eeprom reg domain via a module option.

Any chance something like that could make it upstream if it were dependent on CFG80211_CERTIFICATION_ONUS?

(We recently got a batch of wpea-127n NICs with country-code of TW, which reminded me of this problem).

Thanks,
Ben

Ben Greear <[email protected]>
Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com

Would you please compare the CTL entries programmed into various flavours of those NICs and tell me what's different?

(And if you can easily compare the rest of the OTP modifications, please do.)

I'd like to see whether there are any regulatory related information changes to these NICs.

Adrian

How do I get this information?

Thanks,
Ben

Ben Greear <[email protected]>
Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com

I think it would be reasonable, but note Adrian's points. We likely would need then only to be able to change regulatory domains for only regulatory domains that match the CTLs programmed in. I'll also note that the default CTL is actually a high value rather than no transmit...

Luis

How do I get this information? What is a CTL anyway?

Thanks,
Ben

Ben Greear <[email protected]>
Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com

The CTL edge is a regulatory concept where you have 'edges' to a regulatory domain that imposes further restrictions.

For example, say you have 5500 -> 5600 as a certain set of rules (max txpower 10), and 5400 - 5500 as a certain set of rules (max tx power 20).

The spectral mask for 802.11 rates has a certain dB dropoff at the edge. That bleeds to the adjacent channels.

Now, you can configure a channel at 5490 to have a TX power of 20, _BUT_ the spectral mask means that there'll be some non-zero amount of RF energy "bled" out over the adjacent channels, which includes the 5500-5600MHz range. Because of this, you need some extra rule that defines what the TX power should be at that particular boundary.

Now, for this particular scenario you could infer it from the lower TX power at 5500-5600, but there are still requirements for meeting maximum power output at band edges where the adjacent band is some licenced spectrum or something that we don't run 802.11 on. So we don't have a normal TX power rule for that channel; instead we need to use a CTL rule that says "at this frequency edge, do X."

For further information, have a read of how the ctl edge stuff works in the driver and be prepared to consume some nice wine whilst doing so, in order to prevent clawing at your eyeballs at the hoops that you jump through.

Adrian