[systemd-devel] systemd-networkd vs. iwd

[Alvin Sipraga]

Hi,

On 10/26/20 6:04 PM, Bruce A. Johnson wrote:
> What are the state of things and the plan for the future with respect to
> iwd and systemd-networkd? A couple of years ago, I put together a
> satisfactory solution for my project in OpenEmbedded/Yocto using
> systemd-networkd to manage the IP connections and wpa_supplicant to
> manage the underlying Wi-Fi connection. Now it seems that Yocto has
> dropped wpa_supplicant in favor of iwd, and the iwd folks seem to want
> it to manage DHCP and routing in addition to the basic Level 2
> connectivity. It also seems like systemd-networkd can still do the stuff
> it was doing before and that I can just use iwd to manage the Level 2.
> Am I going to write myself into another dead end if I keep using
> systemd-networkd for the network management and only use iwd for Level 2?

On the contrary, systemd-networkd + iwd is a superb combination, and the 
L2 (iwd) / L3 (networkd) separation also works very well. We have had 
good success running this combination on embedded systems, and I also 
use this setup on my personal workstation. Overall iwd is a very good 
drop-in replacement for wpa_supplicant, just with a more user friendly 
DBus interface and command-line interface (iwctl).

Regarding DHCP, I still leave this to networkd. You can disable it in iwd.

If you are interested in different network profiles depending on the AP, 
you can use SSID= and BSSID= in the [Match] section of your 
systemd.network(5) configuration.

Happy to answer any specific questions you have about the integration.

Regards,
Alvin

> 
> Thanks!
> 
> --
> Bruce A. Johnson
> Herndon, Virginia
> USA
> 
> _______________________________________________
> systemd-devel mailing list
> systemd-devel at lists.freedesktop.org
> https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
>