| mac80211_hwsim - software simulator of 802.11 radio(s) for mac80211 | |
| Copyright (c) 2008, Jouni Malinen <j@w1.fi> | |
| This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify | |
| it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as | |
| published by the Free Software Foundation. | |
| Introduction | |
| mac80211_hwsim is a Linux kernel module that can be used to simulate | |
| arbitrary number of IEEE 802.11 radios for mac80211. It can be used to | |
| test most of the mac80211 functionality and user space tools (e.g., | |
| hostapd and wpa_supplicant) in a way that matches very closely with | |
| the normal case of using real WLAN hardware. From the mac80211 view | |
| point, mac80211_hwsim is yet another hardware driver, i.e., no changes | |
| to mac80211 are needed to use this testing tool. | |
| The main goal for mac80211_hwsim is to make it easier for developers | |
| to test their code and work with new features to mac80211, hostapd, | |
| and wpa_supplicant. The simulated radios do not have the limitations | |
| of real hardware, so it is easy to generate an arbitrary test setup | |
| and always reproduce the same setup for future tests. In addition, | |
| since all radio operation is simulated, any channel can be used in | |
| tests regardless of regulatory rules. | |
| mac80211_hwsim kernel module has a parameter 'radios' that can be used | |
| to select how many radios are simulated (default 2). This allows | |
| configuration of both very simply setups (e.g., just a single access | |
| point and a station) or large scale tests (multiple access points with | |
| hundreds of stations). | |
| mac80211_hwsim works by tracking the current channel of each virtual | |
| radio and copying all transmitted frames to all other radios that are | |
| currently enabled and on the same channel as the transmitting | |
| radio. Software encryption in mac80211 is used so that the frames are | |
| actually encrypted over the virtual air interface to allow more | |
| complete testing of encryption. | |
| A global monitoring netdev, hwsim#, is created independent of | |
| mac80211. This interface can be used to monitor all transmitted frames | |
| regardless of channel. | |
| Simple example | |
| This example shows how to use mac80211_hwsim to simulate two radios: | |
| one to act as an access point and the other as a station that | |
| associates with the AP. hostapd and wpa_supplicant are used to take | |
| care of WPA2-PSK authentication. In addition, hostapd is also | |
| processing access point side of association. | |
| # Build mac80211_hwsim as part of kernel configuration | |
| # Load the module | |
| modprobe mac80211_hwsim | |
| # Run hostapd (AP) for wlan0 | |
| hostapd hostapd.conf | |
| # Run wpa_supplicant (station) for wlan1 | |
| wpa_supplicant -Dwext -iwlan1 -c wpa_supplicant.conf | |
| More test cases are available in hostap.git: | |
| git://w1.fi/srv/git/hostap.git and mac80211_hwsim/tests subdirectory | |
| (http://w1.fi/gitweb/gitweb.cgi?p=hostap.git;a=tree;f=mac80211_hwsim/tests) |