[rfc] removing the NDISulator

Mark Felder feld at FreeBSD.org
Thu Oct 24 00:58:24 UTC 2013


On Wed, Oct 23, 2013, at 19:11, Adrian Chadd wrote:
> On 23 October 2013 15:31, Vincent Hoffman <vince at unsane.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> >  On 23/10/2013 18:35, Eitan Adler wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 6:29 PM, Adrian Chadd <adrian at freebsd.org> <adrian at freebsd.org> wrote:
> >
> >  If there are drivers that people absolutely need fixed then they should
> > stand up and say "hey, I really would like X to work better!" and then
> > follow it up with some encouraging incentives. Right now the NDISulator
> > lets people work _around_ this by having something that kind of works for
> > them but it doesn't improve our general driver / stack ecosystems.
> >
> >  I doubt most people prefer to use the ndisulator over a native driver.
> > However, many people don't have the skills, time, or money to provide
> > the incentives you are talking about.  At this point ndisulator
> > provides a means to an end: working wireless and it isn't causing
> > significant strain on the project in terms of development effort.
> >
> > Our end users are not always developers and I think removing this
> > feature will hurt more than it will help.
> >
> >
> >
> >  As an end user, the main issue I have is that according to the manpage it
> > supports ndis 5.1
> > According to
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Driver_Interface_Specification this
> > is the version supported by
> > Windows XP <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP>, Server 2003<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Server_2003>,
> > Windows CE <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_CE> 4.x, 5.0, 6.0
> >
> > As you might guess most new devices wont be coming with drivers for XP, so
> > does this mean I wont be able to use drivers for a recent windows version
> > (my understanding is that it will but happy to learn differently)
> > If this is the case and there is no active development on it, a gradual
> > depreciation over the 10.x series is probably a good idea. If however its
> > likely to support current drivers/devices it does have a place (I've used
> > it once or twice in a pinch.)
> >
> 
> This is why I'd rather us bite the bullet now and deprecate it, versus
> have
> it in there and put in the work to upgrade it to handle NDIS 6.x drivers
> with the Microsoft wireless extensions stuff.
> 

802.11AC adapters claiming Windows XP support: (very quick search)

http://www.asus.com/Networking/USBAC53/
http://www.asus.com/Networking/PCEAC66/
http://www.netgear.com/home/products/wireless-adapters/ultimate-wireless-adapters/A6200.aspx#two
http://www.trendnet.com/products/proddetail.asp?prod=100_TEW-805UB&cat=202

If these idiots would quit making drivers for XP you might have an
easier battle ahead, Adrian.


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