From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Feb 11 14:28:03 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7CA7016A4CF for ; Fri, 11 Feb 2005 14:28:03 +0000 (GMT) Received: from mail23.sea5.speakeasy.net (mail23.sea5.speakeasy.net [69.17.117.25]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3A92A43D31 for ; Fri, 11 Feb 2005 14:28:03 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org) Received: (qmail 11486 invoked from network); 11 Feb 2005 14:28:02 -0000 Received: from dsl092-078-145.bos1.dsl.speakeasy.net (HELO be-well.ilk.org) ([66.92.78.145]) (envelope-sender ) by mail23.sea5.speakeasy.net (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 11 Feb 2005 14:28:02 -0000 Received: by be-well.ilk.org (Postfix, from userid 1147) id 8BEDB7F; Fri, 11 Feb 2005 09:28:01 -0500 (EST) Sender: lowell@be-well.ilk.org To: "Reid Linnemann" References: <20050210221235.C45ACA068E@csa.cs.okstate.edu> From: Lowell Gilbert Date: 11 Feb 2005 09:28:01 -0500 In-Reply-To: <20050210221235.C45ACA068E@csa.cs.okstate.edu> Message-ID: <443bw3p3wu.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> Lines: 35 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: wireless-to-wired bridging X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 14:28:03 -0000 "Reid Linnemann" writes: > I have a question that is more of a networking question than a BSD > question, but I am hoping someone out there has faced this same dilemma > before and has some advice: > > I have a FreeBSD machine running -current that servers as a router for my > home LAN, using nat. I recently tossed in a DLink DWL-G520 wireless card > (ath0), and bridged that interface to the internal LAN interface on the > machine (rl1). After a bit of configurating, I had the ath interface in > hostap mode, and everything was working great - except the wired clients > cannot route to eachother. > > I am suspicious that, since the wired network is in AP mode, if a > wireless client wants to send a packet to another wireless client, it > must be sent to the AP, which should theoretically redirect the packet > to the appropriate host on the wireless net. In the wired network, a > switch handles this automagically on the datalink layer without those > messages hitting the rl1 interface of the BSD router. I've looked at > the bridge code, and it seems that unless a packet is multicast or > broadcast it will be copied to the other bridge interfaces but not > returned to the original caller. Since the packets being sent between > wireless clients are not broadcast, I think they are getting dumped into > the black hole of the wired LAN, and not being processed and pumped back > out through the ath interface. Is this a correct assumption? Are there > ways I can overcome this problem? I think that you mixed up the terms "wired" and "wireless" in some (but not all) of the uses above. This makes it somewhat harder to follow the problem. I would actually suggest that you make the wireless link a separate subnet from the Ethernets. 802.11 really is a different protocol than 802.1, and I don't think you'll get any performance benefit from bridging in this case.