[STDS-802-11-TGAK] A_MSDU indication of 11ak control header

Thread Links	Date Links
Thread Prev	Thread Next	Thread Index	Date Prev	Date Next	Date Index

Donald,

On the call just now, you brought up the topic of how to indicate a “different/unique” type of A-MSDU that would carry the additional 11ak-defined information, as distinct from a ‘normal’ A-MSDU which has no such control information. This was in an attempt to make this new frame structure re-usable by non-11ak devices, I believe.

I thought about it for a brief time, and I think I’m concluding that we should treat the 11ak link somewhat similarly to a mesh link. That is, since there is already an assumption of mutual exclusion between 11ak and non-11ak devices within a BSS, we can safely ignore the backward compatibility problems of having frame formats that legacy devices cannot understand.

Part of my rationale is that even if we did introduce some sort of method that would allow non-11ak devices to re-use this new format for A-MSDU, then it will require yet another capability mechanism to indicate when a set of peer STAs were both capable of understanding this format, and a justification for why this would be useful, to make it work and get it into the non-11ak world. Off hand, I don’t see that.

So, as I said, my recommendation would be to not worry about this aspect. Instead, we simply say that on an 11ak link, A-MSDUs have a different format, just like the way mesh says that today (see 802.11-2012, 8.3.2.2, if anyone is wondering what I’m talking about). I think it makes things simple, and we have a strong precedent for this approach.

Comments, anyone?

Mark

IF YOU WISH to be Removed from this reflector, PLEASE DO NOT send your request to this CLOSED reflector. We use this valuable tool to communicate on the issues at hand.