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Is it possible to associate single wireless network interface controller (WNIC) with multiple Wireless Access Points (WAP) at a time? If not: why?

I've never heard about such a feature, so I assume it's technically impossible or fairly difficult and rarely implemented. Is it really that difficult/impossible to implement driver providing such a feature? Is it software or hardware difficulty?

I assume that TCP/IP protocols' specifications doesn't limit us at all because if I attach multiple WNICs to my computer, I can easily connect to multiple APs.

  • If it's software difficulty, than what's the actual problem? Does Linux/Windows kernel or WNIC's drivers limits it? Or maybe system libraries (like libc on GNU/Linux systems)?
  • If it's hardware difficulty, what actually limits us? Antennas? Using single radio frequency at a time? If yes, than why can't we implement frequency hopping (like Kismet does)? Because of lost packets during time spent on other channels? If yes, than can we associate WNIC with multiple routers working on the same channel (I know that channel overlapping is bad)?

Note: I'm not talking about dual band routers. I assume that we consider most common WNIC and AP which both work on 2.4GHz channels. If I have to put my question into OS context, than I choose GNU/Linux context.

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patryk.beza
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1 Answers1

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Yes. The basic technique is that the client tells AP 'A' that it is going to sleep and then talks to AP 'B' while A is buffering frames for it.

Microsoft research worked this out a while ago:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/virtualwifi/

Many low-level drivers support Wi-Fi interface virtualization (e.g. the BRCM wl command has options which support this).

Apple's AirDrop and MultiPeer features for OS X and iOS use a similar technique, but instead of talking to a 2nd AP they talk to a peer device.

alfwatt
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