Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Matthew Clark <matthewclark AT inlesserterms.net>]

I wanted to see if there's anyone out there who's been successful at  
getting SMGL to run as a wireless bridge.  And to make myself clear,  
what I mean is to join a wired segment to another wired segment using  
802.11.  The local wired segment uses a common 802.11 wireless access  
point (WRT54G, to be irrelevantly specific).  The remote wired segment  
will use the SMGL rig as a wireless bridge.

There's good information on this page:
  http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Net:Bridge

I have an old junker Dell machine that should suit this task  
perfectly.  Inside is an on-board 3c59x device (3com 3C905TX, eth0),  
and in a PCI slot is a rt2500 (Linksys WMP54G, ra0).

I can't seem to make netconf play nicely with bridging, so I don't use  
it at all.  Instead, I have written a startup script that loads the  
modules for each card, creates a bridge (br0), adds the interfaces to  
the bridge, and sets an IP address to the bridge (so I can access the  
system remotely if I have to).  All of this works.  In fact, I can  
ping hosts through each interface from the bridge rig itself.  Also, I  
can issue a `brctl showmacs br0` and I can see a list of MAC addresses  
on both interfaces.  But nothing will communicate *through* the bridge.

Some reading suggests that what I want to do is only achievable using  
a wireless card that employs a Prism chip (something to do with MAC  
spoofing and how most Wi-Fi cards won't do it).  I am unable to find  
much of anything on which Wi-Fi cards have this chip, or if any other  
wireless card will work.

So I turn to my fellow SMGL users to see if anyone else has built  
their own wireless bridge, and how you did it (or anyone else who has  
some knowledge that might make this work).  I'm thinking someone's  
going to either tell me I have it right, but I just need a specific  
Wi-Fi card, or someone will know what I'm missing and share that hint  
to get what I already have up and running.  But bridge-utils seems  
pretty simple, so what could I have missed?



- MaffooClock

Attachment: pgpSAWkrB7L14.pgp
Description: PGP Digital Signature

Attachment: binByATfvZod5.bin
Description: PGP Public Key