bridge

[rf0]

any sort of wireless bridge that would work on FC6?. is it straight forward?.
By the way, if FC6 comes with zd1211rw modules, how to set it up to work with wlan0 or eth1?.

[ajacques]

I'm actually trying to do the same thing. (I think.)

Setup: cable modem (not PPoE) connected to FC6 box via ethernet and broadcasting over the internal wifi card to my other computers.

Not easy because most of the documentation is for other distributions and there appears to be some significant differences. I have found one article from IBM that I'm trying to digest:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-wap.html
Again, this article talks about Debian and you will notice some significant differences.

Now, I'm responding simply to say "yes I want to do the same thing", in the hope that other people will see the post. Input is welcome, folks! :-) I will also post as I learn new things.

[stoggy]

there is the 802.11 kernel module that allows for bridging you need to get the brctl package. after that you just add the devices like
brctl -a eth0
brctl -a wlan0

once you get the bridge built it uses iptables, route and other normal commands just like nat does.


and so on ... i forget the exact syntax its been awhile the brctl command comes with a good man file though.

[ajacques]

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be as easy as that.

Directions on the various forums alternate between ath0 and wifi0 or between "Master" and "ap" modes. Nothing seems to work together. For exemple, I've found a few stray tutorials but they often refer to archaic versions of either Fedora or Madwifi, so you end up going in 10 different directions.

My plan was to make sure that the wireless card (wifi0 or ath0 whatever) was working independently with a dhcp server, then to bridge. But the wireless card is not yet functional in "ap" (Access Point) mode and the Fedora documentation is frustrating to say the least...

[stoggy]

http://linux-net.osdl.org/index.php/Bridge

use this one. when it says to use eth0 use wifi0 or ath0 and when it says use eth1 use eth0 ... or vice versa


/quote
It doesn't work with my Wireless card!

This is a known problem, and it is not caused by the bridge code. Many wireless cards don't allow spoofing of the source address. It is a firmware restriction with some chipsets. You might find some information in the bridge mailing list archives to help. Has anyone found a way to get around Wavelan not allowing anything but its own MAC address? (answer by Michael Renzmann (mrenzmann at compulan.de))

Well, for 99% of computer users there will never be a way to get rid of this. For this function a special firmware is needed. This firmware can be loaded into the RAM of any WaveLAN card, so it could do its job with bridging. But there is no documentation on the interface available to the public. The only way to achieve this is to have a full version of the hcf library which controls every function of the card and also allows accessing the card's RAM. To get this full version Lucent wants to know that it will be a financial win for them, also you have to sign an NDA. So be sure that you won't most probably get access to this peace of software until Lucent does not change its mind in this (which I doubt never will happen).

If you urgently need to have a wireless LAN card which is able to bridge, you should use one of those having the prism chipset onboard (manufactured by Harris Intersil). There are drivers for those cards available at www.linux-wlan.com (which is the website from Absoval), and I found a mail that says that there is the necessary firmware and an upload tool available for Linux to the public. If you need additional features of an access point you should also talk to Absoval.
/quote