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Re: ifconfig(8) - a tale of two states



Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost> writes:

>>> Is this inconsistent?  I don't know enough about 802.11, but it
>>> seems plausible, at least, to me that the radio could be on (media
>>> active) without the interface having an SSID [...]
>
>> With ethernet, it's not really that interesting if we are up but have
>> no peer, and it's not complicated.  [...]
>
>> Another point is that "link state" only really conceptually applies
>> to a technology where there is a single peer and there is a notion of
>> having a PHY connection to it.
>
> How does this apply to 10base2 or 10base5?  What is the "single peer"
> when what you have is a connection to a shared cable?  If anything,

A fair point.

> 802.11 is in that respect closer to 10base5 than to 10baseT, in that
> it's fundamentally a shared medium.  It's just that the layers above
> the fundamental physical layer are very, very different.

802.11 is multiple things, and IBSS is basically like 10base5/10base2.

With BSS mode, you associate with an AP which is basically like plugging
into a hub/switch.

> The relevance here, I think is that if you're going to try to keep
> 802.11 and Ethernet to a common framework, it needs to handle Ethernet
> as well as 802.11, and Ethernet is a peculiar beast nowadays - it is
> conceptually a shared medium, but recent implementations of it are
> fundamentally interconnected-star topologies rather than bus
> topologies, with a bus-topology fiction built atop the star reality.

True.

> But unless you want to completely desupport 10base2 and 10base5
> interfaces, you need to continue to support bus topologies.

I think what you said is consistent with my NA proposal.

It may be that with 10base2, "UP" means "cable is terminated properly".
Or perhaps it's NA.

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