Intel's IWD 2.0 Released For Modern Linux Wireless Daemon

One of countless great open-source projects from Intel over the years is IWD as a modern wireless daemon for WiFi devices on Linux. IWD has been in the works for over a half-decade as a new replacement to wpa_supplicant and with time has implemented many features and seen widespread adoption. Released this week was IWD 2.0 as the latest milestone for this open-source wireless daemon.

For those not familiar with IWD from past Phoronix articles or experimenting with it yourself, the project Wiki sums itself up as:

"iNet Wireless Daemon (iwd) project aims to provide a comprehensive Wi-Fi connectivity solution for Linux based devices. The core goal of the project is to optimize resource utilization: storage, runtime memory and link-time costs. This is accomplished by not depending on any external libraries and utilizes features provided by the Linux Kernel to the maximum extent possible. The result is a self-contained environment that only depends on the Linux Kernel and the runtime C library."

NetworkManager supports IWD as does Intel's ConnMan connection manager. With the recent Ubuntu 22.10 release, IWD finally was promoted to main.

Intel has done a lot for Linux wireless over the years from WiFi drivers and utilities like IWD and ConnMan to the now dropped WiMAX code to improving Linux networking support/performance in general.

The IWD 2.0 release this week adds support for many new features as well as a number of fixes. The official WID 2.0 change-log notes:

Fix issue with handling P2P and limiting ciphers to CCMP.
Fix issue with scanning before forced roaming action.
Fix issue with provided scan frequencies from RRM.
Fix issue with handling Michael MIC failure message.
Fix issue with handling timestamp size in MPDU frames.
Fix issue with handling enablement of OCVC for FT AKMs.
Fix issue with handling FT work as highest priority.
Fix issue with handling roaming events and Multi-BSS.
Add support for utilizing roaming candidates list.
Add support for utilizing TLS session caching.
Add support for ciphers with 256 bits key size.
Add support for Access Point mode with legacy TKIP.
Add support for MAC address changes while powered.
Add support for IPv4 and IPv6 network configuration.

Those using IWD and building it from source can find IWD v2.0 on kernel.org.