Playing with Standards: the IEEE 802.11 case

Hamilton Institute Seminars (iPod / small)

Speaker: Dr. F. Gringoli Abstract: Experimenting in the field is a key activity for the evolution of the modern Internet: this is especially true for radio access protocols like IEEE 802.11 that are usually affected by unpredictable issues due to noise, competing stations and interference. Here we introduce OpenFWWF, an opensource firmware that implements a fully compliant 802.11 MAC on off-the-shelf WiFi boards: we show how it can be used in conjunction with the Linux kernel to play with the wireless stack. To this end we further demonstrate how we can easily customize the basic DCF access firmware to explore either performance boosting variations or to measure physical properties of the wireless channel.