From: Tanvir Hassan (tanvir_at_mail.org)
Date: 2002-05-02 08:06:06 UTC
Hmmm. I was suspecting/dreading this myself. Just as a lark, I went ahead
and bought another Belkin to see if I could take out hostap_plx from the
equation and see if WDSing 2 Belkin APs might work. Even that did not work.
BTW, I also turned on the "standard" WDS code in the driver in the vain hope
that my hardware had new enough firmware to support it. Made no difference.
When I looked very carefully in the Belkin manual at the diagram of how "roaming" with multiple Belkin APs worked, I noticed that both APs were HARDWIRED back to the same switch! So I guess what they mean by "extending your network" is that you can hardwire all your APs to your network to extend the wireless range. In my HOME this is not feasible (avoiding hardwiring components was the whole point!).
So I guess I cannot extend my network by having my stations and APs cooperate and bridge me to an AP that is hardwired into my network. And as a corrollary, because the Belkin APs only work if they are all hardwired to a network, this means consumers are incented to purchase VASTLY fewer APs because of the hardwired limitation. I am thinking that Belkin may not be in the home AP business too long :-).
Now the DLink AP in the store had explicitly mentioned AP to AP bridging, so maybe that will work. I will try that next and let people know the results. The Musenki sounds nice...but paying $200 more for an AP seems excessive. If you can get me one of those for $109, then PLEASE send me the link! ;-)
>
> > The Belkin AP has the latest firmware (1.4g.8) and the PC Cards also
seem to
> > have the latest firmware (0.83).
>
> To bad, so sad.
>
> > Is there something I am forgetting to do?
>
> Not really, there's not much you could do.
>
>
> It sounds (just from the firmware revision you mention) that the Belkin
> AP is really more Atmel hardwre under the hood. Thus, it will probably
> never fully implement (or even support) WDS frame formats, especially
> the hacked variety which are used for HostAP/OpenAP.
>
> Anyway, I'm tried the same 'deal' with a linksys WAP11 (same hardware
> inside as your Belkin AP), interestingly enough, with I set the SSID and
> DSCHAN the same on the Wap11 and OpenAP, I see the familiar 'added AP
> 00:04:53:00:23:17 to list of APs' message on the console. However, I'm
> 100% sure that this wlan0ap0 link will never ever successfully recieve
> data from the WAP11, nor will the WAP11 ever successfully recieve data
> from an OpenAP.
>
> However, setting the WAP11 to "ap client" mode at least allowed the
> WAP11 itself to associate as a station (via wlan0 on the OpenAP) --
> however, whatever bridging style they use isn't appretly compatible with
> anything resembling WDS, and furthermore, it being associated as a
> station to wlan0 means even if it did speak WDS, the frame would never
> properly get decoded.
>
> Anyway, sorry to dash the fun, but this was something I had hoped for
> myself and found would not work.
>
> Anyway, why not use a real radio like a Musenki M1?
>
> --Tk
>