In the previous articles, we have seen the path to configuration of 802.11 parameters in Linux follows nl80211, cfg80211, mac80211 and softmac driver via callbacks and netlink sockets. It is also seen that in the case of a fullmac driver, mac80211 is not used but configuration flows directly to the fullmac driver from cfg80211. The below image will refresh our memory a bit:

For the user-space daemons wpa_supplicant – which handles association, security establishment, configuration management for an 802.11 non-AP station or for hostapd, which handles the same for an access point, configuration inputs are provided with the respective configuration files

1. hostapd.conf – for access point configuration
2. wpa_supplicant.conf – for supplicant configuration

These files are input to the supplicant/hostapd code to have initial WiFi configurations set for the WiFi hardware.

A snippet from the wpa_supplicant configuration file is provided below. The “#” indicates comment. whichever configuration is to be enabled, the comment needs to be removed and the parameter configured.

how is Data packet TX/RX handled ?