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Date:      Sun, 6 Oct 2002 15:13:06 -0400
From:      Eric Gebhart <saseag@unx.sas.com>
To:        FreeBSD mobile list <freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Mobile Networking.
Message-ID:  <20021006151306.B11678@unx.sas.com>

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When I started using my laptop last year I was immediately annoyed
by my networking setup.  At home I have wireless.  At work I had wire.

But If I had fxp0=DHCP in my rc.conf then the etc/networking script would
always do dhclient with it.  Even if there was no connection on it.

I resorted to editing the network script before shutdown for awhile.
Reversing the wi0 and fxp0 dhcp setting for the next boot up.

Finally I wrote a script that smartly runs dhclient on the preferred
interface.  If both interfaces are up it will run it on the highest 
ranked interface.

Once that was working life was much more pleasant.  But there were
still things that were different between my setups at home and work.

nfs mounts, automount, vpn, proxy servers, etc.

I wrote another script that looks for a given machine on the local
net and then runs the associated script at startup and shutdown.

I run my own dns, that helps some.  I also run my own squid.  I
couldn't figure out how to make squid work both with a parent and
without depending on if the parent was there.  So I have two squid
configs that my scripts swap depending on the location.

Now I have wireless at work.  So now I have multiple access points
to deal with.  Each with it's own set of wep keys, channel, etc.

I need to be able to look through my known AP's and find
out if one of them is available.  If it is then use it.

Then continue on with figuring out which network I might be on...

I mostly have this working although I've found a lot of inconsistency
with wireless cards telling me that they are 'not associated' or have
'no signal' when they really do.

I've thought about hooking in kismet to handle all the wireless detection
issues.  But I haven't taken that step yet.

All my scripts are configurable using settings /etc/rc.conf.local and
by adding functions to a script in /usr/local/etc.

I have to think that these issues are common to most people who use
a laptop on more than one network.  So how does everyone else deal
with these problems?

Eric



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