[maemo-developers] information required to replace Maemo5 wlan bits

[From: Jamie Thompson]

> Just to let you know, that IMHO the analysis and information you are
> collecting are even more important than rewriting the proprietary
> components. It helps both understanding the inner workings of the
> system (what about writing a "Maemo 5 Internals" document for the
> proprietary parts? :)) and help people interacting with these
> components, customizing them (e.g. binary patching) or replacing them
> when necessary.
>
> Anyway, I appreciate reading these RE analysis, even though I'm not
> actively using my N900 (now playing with N9). Maybe it could be added
> to some wiki section as well?

Agreed, I am also immensely grateful for all the reverse-engineering 
that goes on. One day I'll finally get around to reimplementing the 
conversations and address books ;)

I also think the wiki is far more visible long-term than the mailing 
list archive (though it's good to have it in more than one place), so
putting things there would be great. The mailing list is obviously far 
better for drawing attention to it though (as is posting to TMO, as you
have been).

>> I'm not sure what would be the point of replacing the proprietary
>> WLAN bits.
> 1.Ability to support WiFi security mechanisms that the stock bits
> dont support
> 2.Support for assigning higher priorities to different wireless
> networks
> (i.e. if you move into range of a higher-priority network than the
> one you
> are on, it will join to that)
>
> Probably other things too.

The particular reason I briefly looked at this a while back was to be 
able to have WiFi and cellular active at the same time without having to
run a hotspot application (i.e. the WiFi as a client to my existing 
wireless network, not a new AP). In my case, I just wanted to be able to
SSH to my phone over WiFi whilst it was sharing it's cellular signal 
over PC-Suite/Unix-mode USB. In the end I set the N900 up as a router
and switched to Windows-mode USB networking, but it would be nice and 
much simpler to just use it as I originally intended (not to mention, I
can't seem to get PC-Suite mode to work again afterwards without a 
reboot).

- Jamie