Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 00:16:06 -0700 From: Ross Finlayson <finlayson@live.com> To: freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org Subject: WaveLAN "BSS mode" on FreeBSD? Message-ID: <4.3.1.1.20000929235725.00b74d30@localhost>
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[I originally sent this question just to Bill Paul, but thought others in
this group might also be able to answer it.]
I have a Lucent WaveLAN/Orinoco card plugged into a FreeBSD box, and have
been able to get it working OK in "ad hoc demo" mode, but I'd like to be
able to get it working in BSS (aka "infrastructure") mode, so that the
FreeBSD box can act as a 802.11 AP (& we can free ourselves from reliance
on hardware running KarlNet software).
My (perhaps limited) understanding of 802.11 is that the reason why BSS
mode doesn't work for a 802.11 interface attached a 'vanilla' FreeBSD (or
Linux, etc.) router is that - in this mode - a client node needs to be
"authenticated" and "associated" with an access point (AP) before it can
send or receive data packets, and that this requires a couple of low-level
packet exchanges that don't happen automatically.
I would like to implement an AP 'daemon' for FreeBSD that does this. At
first, this daemon would just do the basic (null) authentication and
association - so that basic data delivery can work - but later on it could
- I hope - be extended to implement the packet buffering required to
support "power saving" operation. Of course, this will be Open Source
(probably GPL), and - I hope - will be portable to other Unixes as well.
My plan was to have the daemon (i) put the "wi" device into BSS mode (& set
the SSID), (ii) listen to the raw device for low-level 802.11
"authentication" and "association" request packets, and (iii) respond to
these packets appropriately, so that the client node can proceed with
regular data delivery.
Unfortunately, I've hit a road block at step (ii): I can't hear anything
from the "wi" device. Specifically, I first do
wicontrol -i wi0 -n LIVE.COM
wicontrol -i wi0 -q LIVE.COM
wicontrol -i wi0 -p 1
to set the WaveLAN to BSS mode, using SSID "LIVE.COM". Then I do
tcpdump -i wi0 -e
to listen to the "wio" interface, while I try connecting with a WaveLAN
client (a Windows NT laptop, with the WaveLAN card set to infrastructure
mode using the same SSID ("LIVE.COM"). Unfortunately, I hear nothing. (I
also hear nothing if I add the "-p" flag (don't use promiscuous mode) to
the "tcpdump" command.
Do you have any ideas here? Am I going about this the wrong way, or is
there something more that we need to know about Lucent WaveLAN cards in
order to get this to work?
Ross.
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