Re: (Retry) Bridging a wi-device with a LAN-adapter

Erik Paulsen Skålerud wrote:

>Hello. I'm a little confused here.
>I want to bridge my wireless card (Orinoco/Lucent Silver 11mbit) with my
>LAN-adapter (fxp0).
>
[...]

>
>So. Where do I stand? Can it do bridging in FreeBSD or not? I tried to make
>it work, both in FreeBSD and Windows XP (yes, I know.) without any results.
>
You can't do it with Lucent cards, but if you go get a PrismII based 
802.11b NIC, you can use host_ap
mode and turn it into a "virtual access point". This, in turn, can be 
bridged with ng_bridge (I find netgraph
bridging easier, personally. See 
/usr/share/examples/netgraph/ether.bridge) to fxp0 without difficulty.

I don't know whether or not you can use bridging with adhoc mode.

Various manufacturers OEM the PrismII cards... SMC, Lucent, Linksys, 
USR, ... The only bummer is that
I don't know for sure whether or not the new SMC and Linksys integrated 
PCI cards (both sell PCI cards that
simply have a pccard slot for a pccard adapter, but both now also sell 
all-in-one PCI cards that aren't just pccard
adapters), but I don't know whether or not the wi driver supports them. 
I think it might be time for a "30 day loan"
from Fry's. :-)

>
>While searching on mailinglists, I see several people saying that you need a
>binary firmware wich costs money so that the cards can work with bridging..
>the reason would be that the manufactors of these chipsets wants to make
>money on selling licenses to companies who want an AP.
>
That's true, for Lucent cards.

>
>I've also heard a rumour that ng_bridge(4)/netgraph can do bridging with
>wi(4)-devices. Is this true?
>

That's true, for PrismII cards. :-)



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