Date: 13 Feb 2005 10:17:30 -0500 From: Lowell Gilbert <freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: wireless-to-wired bridging Message-ID: <44650w4hh1.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> In-Reply-To: <20050211145816.8FA52A069F@csa.cs.okstate.edu> References: <20050211145816.8FA52A069F@csa.cs.okstate.edu>
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"Reid Linnemann" <lreid@cs.okstate.edu> writes: > I'm bridging the devices so that the wired and wireless nets will appear > to be on the same physical network to eachother. Well, yes, that's what bridging means. Why do you want that? [Is it a Microsoft thing?] > I think I was really tired when I wrote my original email.. so let me > rewrite my hypothesis: > > I am suspicious that, since the wireless interface on the BSD machine > operates in AP mode, if a wireless client wants to send a packet to > another wireless client, it must be first sent to the wireless interface > of the BSD machine, which should theoretically redirect the packet to > the appropriate host on the wireless net. In the wired network, a switch > handles this case automagically on the datalink layer before any > messages can hit 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 bridged interfaces but not > returned to the original caller. Since the packets being sent from one > wireless client to another are not broadcast, I think that the bridge > module may be dumping them into the black hole of the wired LAN, and > they are not being processed and pumped back out through the ath > interface. Is this a correct assumption? Are there ways I can overcome > this problem? On a quick look, I think you might be on the right track. The bridging code seems in a number of spots to be built specifically for Ethernet. I have always maintained that bridging unlike media was a hack bound for problems... You might have more success using dummynet for bridging rather than trying to fix things in the protocol stack. Good luck. -- Lowell Gilbert, embedded/networking software engineer, Boston area http://be-well.ilk.org/~lowell/
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