Scanning in Multiple Regulatory Domains

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Important  The Native 802.11 Wireless LAN interface is deprecated in Windows 10 and later. Please use the WLAN Device Driver Interface (WDI) instead. For more information about WDI, see WLAN Universal Windows driver model.

 

If the 802.11 station supports multiple regulatory domains, the 802.11 station must follow these guidelines when performing the scan operation:

  • If the value of the IEEE 802.11 dot11CurrentRegDomain management information base (MIB) object is set to a value of DOT11_REG_DOMAIN_OTHER, the 802.11 station determines the regulatory domain it is operating in through the IEEE 802.11d Country information element (IE) of the received 802.11 Beacon and Probe Response frames when it connects to the basic service set (BSS) network.

    While the 802.11 station is connected to the BSS network, the 802.11 station can perform an active scan on the channels that are valid for the regulatory domain used within the BSS network.

    If the 802.11 station performs a disconnection operation from the BSS network or performs a disassociation operation with an access point (AP), the 802.11 must only perform a passive scan on any channel supported by the PHY. For more information about these operations, see Native 802.11 Network Operations.

  • If the value of the dot11CurrentRegDomain MIB object is not set to a value of DOT11_REG_DOMAIN_OTHER, the 802.11 station is operating within its default regulatory domain. In this situation, the 802.11 station can perform an active scan on all channels that are valid for the regulatory domain specified by the dot11CurrentRegDomain MIB object.

For more information about the dot11CurrentRegDomain MIB object, see OID_DOT11_CURRENT_REG_DOMAIN.