Intel's IWD 1.11 Released For Faster WiFi Scanning

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel's IWD 1.11 Released For Faster WiFi Scanning

The Intel-developed IWD Linux wireless daemon is out with its first feature release of 2021...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-IWD-1.11-Released

[LoveRPi]

One of the best Intel sponsored projects among many. IWD is awesome!

[archsway]

favouring the 2.4 channels 1, 6 and 11

What about regions where channel 13 is available?

[jannis]

Wow, so 2.4GHz channels are still preferred over 5GHz? Wait, it's 2021, right?
So if a user is quick to click on a listed "network" (since the 5GHz scan takes 1-1.5s), it will connect to the 2.4GHz one instead of the faster connection that 5GHz usually provides? Let's hope the AP uses band-steering to push the device to 5GHz some time later ...

[wedidntgotothemoon]

can't get an IPv6 address with iwd

[balrog]

Wow, so 2.4GHz channels are still preferred over 5GHz? Wait, it's 2021, right?
So if a user is quick to click on a listed "network" (since the 5GHz scan takes 1-1.5s), it will connect to the 2.4GHz one instead of the faster connection that 5GHz usually provides? Let's hope the AP uses band-steering to push the device to 5GHz some time later ...

So that could happen if the 5GHz network (or a 5GHz bss of a dual-band network) had not been in the scan results before that. Basically that means that either you're not in autoconnect mode (because automatic scans would likely have seen both the 2.4 and 5GHz BSSes before) or that you've never connected to either network before. Or you're already connected and want to manually switch.

So in the case of two different networks, it's the user's decision to go with the 2.4GHz one. If they're switching from another network they can as well switch to the 5GHz one afterwards...

In the dual-band network case you have a point that IWD might be tricking the user into connecting to the 2.4GHz one, I guess I might send a patch to delay the bss-selection during a manual Connect() call, if a user-triggered scan happens to be in the 5GHz phase.