A detailed picture of how
nl80211
and cfg80211
work with other parts of the system (user space
, kernel
, and hardware
). nl80211
is the interface between user space software (iw
,wpa_supplicant
, etc.) and the kernel (cfg80211
andmac80211
kernel modules, and specific drivers).- The WiFi drivers and hardware could be Full-MAC or Soft-MAC (see Wireless_network_interface_controller).
cfg80211_ops
is a set of operations that Full-MAC drivers andmac80211
module register tocfg80211
module.ieee80211_ops
is a set of operations that Soft-MAC drivers register tomac80211
module.