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Hello,

One thing I am not comfortable with is the difference between IBSS and STSL (station to station link)  The CWAP text does not say very much about STSL.  On the other hand the IBSS appears to do some of the functions of the AP without there being an AP.  For example the stations in an IBSS take turns sending the beacon.

Is there a way to generate STSL traffic between two windows laptops to look at in a capture?

The really fundamental question is if I did a sniffer capture of STSL traffic, what packet characteristics are unique to STSL?

Regards,

  David

I am still hoping someone has a packet capture for a STSL or can say what OS/hardware/application would generate one.

To partially answer my question from the IEEE 802.11-2012 standard it says, "station-to-station link (STSL): A direct link established between two stations (STAs) while associated to a common access point (AP). This term refers to a generic mechanism that allows direct station-to-station communication while remaining in the infrastructure mode. Establishment of this type of link includes an initialization step. The STSL is terminated by specific teardown procedures under the conditions prescribed in this standard. The only example of this procedure currently specified is direct link established by the
direct-link setup (DLS)." 

Apparently there is such thing as a station to station link master key.  It would be interesting to see a packet capture of that.