Re: IBSS and BSS with multiple FreeBSD Wireless Gateways

In message: <Pine.A41.4.10.10208171330130.4338-100000@bessel.tekniikka.turkuamk.fi>
            Evren Yurtesen <[email protected]> writes:
: Is it possible to use FreeBSD with IBSS or BSS mode as a bridge to
: overcome line of sight issues? and provide roaming for mobile users?

"bridge" is likely not the word that you want to use here.  The wi
driver cannot act as a bridge, except when it is being used in hostap
mode.  Otherwise, there are some weird issues that I can't exactly
recall, but that tend to screw people up a lot on.

Ideally, you'd want to have two APs that talked to each other, maybe
via a third party proxie.  However, none of that code is currently
implemented in FreeBSD's hostap stuff.

: What is the biggest problem if we are using IBSS mode?

Association might be the biggest issue, but if you make everybody a
ibss-master this is minimized.  Also, if you have ancient
firmware on some prism2 (like less than 0.6) and/or old firmware on
lucent cards (in the 6.0.6 range), then you'll have issues wrt
standards conformance.

: Another question is if we are using IBSS mode and 2 clients are close
: to each other but the gateway is little bit more far away. Does it cause
: the clients to choose each other instead of the gateway because they
: have stronger signal? If this happens, wouldnt this cause the link to 
: the gateway be broken?

IBSS mode causes people to try to talk directly to each other as much
as possible.  I don't know what the relaying rules for ibss are, but
if you need to rely on a man in the middle, then you are likely going
to be frustrated.  I've never tried it, so maybe it just works, but I
kinda doubt it.  Grab, read and understand the 802.11 spec :-)

Warner

To Unsubscribe: send mail to [email protected]
with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message