From: À̽ÂÈ£ (shlee_at_adams.gwu.ac.kr)
Date: 2002-10-07 02:38:18 UTC
I have tried to work bridging between wlan0 and eth0, wlan0 is using pcmacis-cs-3.1.10 & linux-wlan-0.1.8. On my mpc860 board, my wireless lan card talk fine with AP. My wireless lan card is Samsung SWL-2100N. I've thinked for several days, fianlly i founded this messages from bridge.sourceforge.net.
Has anyone found a way to get around wavelan not allowing anything but its own mac address?
(answer by Michael Renzmann (mrenzmann at compulan.de))
Well, for 99% of computer users there will never be a way to get rid of this. For this function a special firmware is needed. This firmware can be loaded into the RAM of any WaveLAN card, so it could do its job with bridging. But there is no documentation on the interface available to the public. The only way to achieve this is to have a full version of the hcf library which controls every function of the card and also allows accessing the card´s RAM. To get this full version Lucent wants to know that it will be a financial win for them, also you have to sign an NDA. So be sure that you won´t most probably get access to this peace of software until Lucent does not change its mind in this (which I doubt never will happen).
If you urgently need to have a wireless lan card which is able to bridge, you should use one of those having the prism chipset onboard (manufactured by Harris Intersil). There are drivers for those cards available at www.linux-wlan.com (which is the website from Absoval), and I found a mail that says that there is the necessary firmware and an upload tool available for Linux to the public. If you need additional features of an access point you should also talk to Absoval.
I still don't understand!!
(answer by Mark S. Mathews (mark at absoval.com))
Bridging ethernet (v2 or 802.3) is predicated on the ability of a station to transmit frames with a source address (SA) other than its own. This is possible because ethernet uses a 'transmit and forget'/stateless transmission model.
This isn't possible with 'normal' 802.11 station cards and software because 802.11 station mode doesn't allow the transmission of frames with 'someone else's source address. The primary reason is that 802.11 is an acknowledged protocol. If you transmit a frame with someone lses source address, the ACK will nver come back to you. The ACK will be sent to the station whose source address you used.
There are ways to make it work (that's how I earn a living ;-), but it is not always straightforward and you probably won't get it right without a pretty solid understanding of 802.11, it's modes, and the frame header format.
I have used AP firmware. But i'm wondering that briding firmware is needed and it really is. I couldn't get any information about this firmware from Intersil or Samsung. Can anybody tell me something about this?