From owner-freebsd-doc Fri Apr 5 11:14:46 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from rwcrmhc54.attbi.com (rwcrmhc54.attbi.com [216.148.227.87]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CD4FB37B416 for ; Fri, 5 Apr 2002 11:14:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from bmah.dyndns.org ([12.233.149.189]) by rwcrmhc54.attbi.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.27 201-229-121-127-20010626) with ESMTP id <20020405191437.UCJL15826.rwcrmhc54.attbi.com@bmah.dyndns.org>; Fri, 5 Apr 2002 19:14:37 +0000 Received: from intruder.bmah.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by bmah.dyndns.org (8.12.2/8.12.2) with ESMTP id g35JEbt2026630; Fri, 5 Apr 2002 11:14:37 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from bmah@intruder.bmah.org) Received: (from bmah@localhost) by intruder.bmah.org (8.12.2/8.12.2/Submit) id g35JEaif026629; Fri, 5 Apr 2002 11:14:36 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <200204051914.g35JEaif026629@intruder.bmah.org> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.5+ 20020404 with nmh-1.0.4 To: Mike DeGraw-Bertsch Cc: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Article on wireless networking on FreeBSD In-reply-to: <3CAC17E4.30205@radioactivedata.org> References: <3CAC17E4.30205@radioactivedata.org> Comments: In-reply-to Mike DeGraw-Bertsch message dated "Thu, 04 Apr 2002 04:07:48 -0500." From: "Bruce A. Mah" Reply-To: bmah@freebsd.org X-Face: g~c`.{#4q0"(V*b#g[i~rXgm*w;:nMfz%_RZLma)UgGN&=j`5vXoU^@n5v4:OO)c["!w)nD/!!~e4Sj7LiT'6*wZ83454H""lb{CC%T37O!!'S$S&D}sem7I[A 2V%N&+ X-Image-Url: http://www.employees.org/~bmah/Images/bmah-cisco-small.gif X-Url: http://www.employees.org/~bmah/ Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 11:14:36 -0800 Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org If memory serves me right, Mike DeGraw-Bertsch wrote: > With some relatively minor changes, I think it'd be a useful part of the > handbook. It's online at > http://www.radioactivedata.org/wireless_freebsd.html. I'd appreciate > any thoughts, comments, critiques, or criticism. Hi Mike-- I agree that this would be useful to have...whether as a part of the Handbook or a separate article is not clear to me yet. The Handbook *is* lacking any coverage at all on 802.11* networking. High-level comments: In general I liked the article...there's a lot of good information in here. The biggest criticism I have about it is that it's not clear at the outset what the subject of the article is. In other words, is it about 802.11* networks on FreeBSD in general, or setting up a FreeBSD machine to act as a BS, or...???... An introduction might help. You mentioned that many commercial APs don't do IPsec or IPv6. That's true, but the Aironet 352 AP I have doesn't need to. It's just a link-layer bridge...I routinely run IPv6 over it, no problem. I suspect most of the APs that don't have aspirations of being routers work the same way. I don't necessarily agree with the "stick with 40-bit WEP cards and save your money" comment. Last time I bought Aironet PCMCIA cards, I thought that 128-bit was the same price as 40-bit anyways. (Granted, I was *at* Cisco at the time.) "Cool. How do I set it up?" It isn't obvious here whether this is for a laptop/workstation or for a BS. It might be better to more explicitly separate the setup for a typical client machine with the setup needed for a BS. I'd imagine more people have to do the former than the latter. "Wireless configuration": I thought the frequency setting was ignored in BSS mode? I might be wrong on this. Also, I put most of the functionality of your script into /etc/start_if.an0 (for example) so that I don't need to touch pccard.conf. /etc/rc.network and /etc/ pccard_ether call the startup script for each interface automatically, if needed. "Client Configuration": I was confused here. What was the part I'd been reading for the last few pages before this? "Hey, is this secure?": Might be nice to say here that there is no single technique to prevent hijacking of a network or eavesdropping, but a combination of mechanisms can be effective (e.g. WEP + IPsec). Nice article...hope these comments are of some help. Thanks for putting it up! Bruce. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message