Test Plan
The test plan says "different wireless security settings" - could you suggest some specific settings to test? It'd be also good if we knew which were the more common settings In The Wild.
MatthiasClasen: I don't know anything about this, all the wireless acronymns only confuse me...I'll ask Dan to provide some input.
[2008-07-21] dcbw: clarified in the main article. You can only use open, WEP-40, WEP-128, and WPA-PSK. Since there is no central authentication server with adhoc wifi networks, you cannot use any 802.1x-based methods like WPA[2]-Enterprise or LEAP.
As for "different operating systems on the second laptop" - is (some windows variant) and (some OS X variant) sufficient, or do we also need to test other Linux distros, specific Windows/OS X versions, etc?
MatthiasClasen: The more the better, I'd say. But certainly, Windows, OS X, iphone would be the most important ones.
[2008-07-21] dcbw: clarified in the main article. I believe that any OS should work here, as long as that OS performs DHCP when connecting to ad-hoc wifi networks. I'm 85% sure that Mac OS X does this, unsure about Windows. This should be tested.
[2008-07-21] dcbw: note that kernel drivers are still pretty spotty in Ad-Hoc mode, that will get fixed up as time goes on and I've already pushed a bunch of fixes into 2.6.26 and posted them to 2.6.25-stable as well. Some mac80211-based drivers don't have all the support required for Ad-Hoc mode, though most older full-mac drivers like ipw2100, ipw2200, ipw2915, airo, orinoco, hostap, libertas, and atmel should work fine.
[2008-07-27] tsd: how would this work a dialup connection or could it?