Understanding ic_node_alloc method

Hi all,

I am trying to understand the purpose of ic->ic_node_alloc and it is not clear to me what its purpose is.

After looking through a few examples, I see that there is a "struct DRIVERNAME_node" that gets allocated. The first member of this struct must be a "struct ieee80211_node ni". Then the function either returns the allocated DRIVERNAME_node pointer or or &DRIVER_NAME_node->ni (same address since `ni` must be the first value in the struct). This part is clear.

Internally, different functions assign different values and I have not been able to determine a consistency between them. Can someone please explain to me the purpose of this function? What is being kept track of? When is it triggered?

Open-ended question, please explain.
Thank you!
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Farhan Khan
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