[Olsr-dev] convincing google to support ad-hoc mode

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On May 24, 2012, at 5:42 AM, Henning Rogge wrote:

> On 05/24/2012 05:06 AM, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>> 
>> I'm here at the Google Internet at Liberty conference in Washington
>> DC.  There are some internal rumblings in Google about making Android
>> support Ad-hoc mode natively.  I think we should support this effort
>> as much as possible, since it'll make mesh on Android work a lot
>> easier.  One concern in Google is whether the hardware universally
>> supports ad-hoc mode, or whether Android would have to make special
>> cases for the hardware that does not support ad-hoc mode.
>> 
>> As far as I know, all wifi hardware that would be included in an
>> Android phone will support ad-hoc mode.  Anyone have any info on
>> this, whether contradicting or supporting this claim?
> 
> Adhoc mode is part of the 802.11abg standard (not sure if its mentioned
> for 802.11n). So any device calling itself WLAN compatible should be
> able to do so. Unfortunately some drivers don't support Adhoc mode.
> 
> But a lot of Google Android devices DO support Adhoc, you just have to compile a wpa_supplicant with adhoc mode.

The problem is that Android doesn't support Adhoc but the Linux kernel does.  This means that we have to tell Android that the wifi is off, then configure the adhoc mode by talking only to Linux.  So for any Android app that checks for internet access with the Android API, which most do, Android will tell those apps that there is no wifi since we told Android to turn off the wifi.

.hc