[rt2x00-users] Selecting a driver for roaming with the rt2870

[Blaise Gassend]

One extra tidbit, in case somebody else has seen the problem that is
preventing me from testing rt2800usb. Using the rt2800usb drivers, I
seem to be able to associate and receive packets (I can see them
arriving with tcpdump). But somehow I can't seem to send any packets
(though I know that packets are being sent during association).

On Mon, 2010-03-22 at 21:40 -0700, Blaise Gassend wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am currently looking at the rt2870 for a roaming wifi application on a
> linux platform (if you're interested in the app, it is
> here:http://www.willowgarage.com/blog/2009/10/26/texas-robot).
> 
> >From the digging around and testing I have done, it seems that there are
> two drivers out there right now for it:
> 
> - Ralink's rt2870sta. It works well for me in terms of solidly
> transmitting data when stationary, but sucks for roaming, as you can't
> do background scanning, and access point switching appears to be pretty
> buggy for now. 
> 
> - Then there is the rt2800usb. I have seen rumors that it works. I can
> use it to scan. I have not managed to associate to any access points
> with it yet (Using the stock Ubuntu Karmic kernel 2.6.31-20). Also, I
> have fears that it probably doesn't support all the chipset's features
> as well as the vendor's driver does. But, this driver uses mac80211,
> which is where things are going in linux, and if I could get
> communication working, roaming capabilities would follow for free (I
> think) using mac80211.
> 
> Probably, at some point we are going to want to go with rt2800usb, so as
> much as possible, I would like to be investing my coding time on
> rt2800usb. For me the question is whether anybody knows how close
> rt2800usb is to actually working today. I have a good idea of what I
> need to fix in rt2870sta to get it doing what I want, but I don't know
> why rt2800usb isn't working for me. Do people out there have any success
> stories with rt2800usb on the rt2870? Is there a list of currently
> unsupported features for rt2870 somewhere?
> 
> Thanks,
> Blaise
>