Marcin Jessa wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Oct 2005 17:06:28 -0400
> "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com> wrote:
> 
> : 
> : Vincent <10.50@free.fr> writes:
> : > Perry E. Metzger a écrit :
> : >> Honestly I sometimes now think it was a major mistake for me to
> get a : >> laptop with a built in ath -- it is extremely unpleasant to
> work with : >> the driver in its current state.
> : >
> : > There are major regressions, that's unquestionnable. Who is
> : > responsible for this driver?
> : 
> : dyoung. I CCed him on the mail.
> : 
> : I've got to say that I'm kind of annoyed at how things have gone
> : lately with the problem. (Sorry, it is true.)
> 
> Just run sysctl on a FreeBSD box and grep for ath to see how many more
> settings there are for atheros there and you will stop being surprised.
> The same with ifconfig values for wireless cards. 
> Sam Leffler did great job working on the ath driver and WLAN in
> general for FreeBSD. 
> I've seen him posting a few times here as well but I am not sure about
> his role in the NetBSD project and if it can bear any fruits.
> When it comes to the ath implementation for NetBSD it seems to be there
> just for the records. 
> Sadly it looks like it can't be used for any serious purpose.
> My few attempts to get an answer from dyoung about bugs and features of
> the ath driver in CURRENT vs FreeBSD allways met with lack of response. 
> That's a pity too and very discouraging. 

I'm starting to ramp up involvement in netbsd.  OTOH I typically ignore 
complaints unless they include useful info.  Perhaps netbsd folks don't 
have ready access to useful tools like athstats, 80211stats and the 
equivalent *debug apps--or maybe they're integrated into other programs 
(I'm still learning).  The ath support in general is not perfect but it 
actually works very well on many systems.  If netbsd folks are having 
problems then it should be possible to remedy them.  Of course if you're 
not willing to deal with some bumps then by all means fall back to 
another card.

Beware that I periodically get way busy and may not respond immediately 
so don't expect miracles.  I'm leaning heavily on David for help as he's 
been working with my code in netbsd for a long time.

	Sam