Smooth Wireless

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 10:34:40 -0500
> From: Jason Dusek <jason-dusek at uiowa.edu>
> Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile at freebsd.org
> 
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> I would like to know about the right way to set up wireless. I have
> Dell D600 with a Dell TrueMobile 1350 running CURRENT. Ndis works
> well, and I've written a shell script that brings up my wireless
> interface everytime that I boot.  However, running wireless is still
> not very smooth. I have a host of problems:
> 
>   => If I leave a wireless zone and then hook-up an ethernet cord my computer 
> will not simply switch to the corded interface. I have to run sysinstall.
>   => If I boot up with the ethernet configured and then enter a wireless zone, I 
> can't simply switch to the wireless - I have to run sysinstall.
>   => If I go from one wireless zone to another, I have to run sysinstall.
>   => Sometimes when I bring the wireless up in sysinstall, I get a 'page fault' 
> and my system crashes.

> 
> How do I get my machine to dynamically pick the interface that is
> working? And what do I do about these page faults? I have looked at
> the Handbook, etc., and while there is some useful information there I
> can't find anything that deals with changing one's interface on the
> fly.

OK. I give up. Why are you using sysinstall? I mean,this looks like a
very awkward. 

I don't know of a way to do it dynamically, but something with devd
might be possible. The basic steps to switching are:
Disable old routes. (route flush)
Configure new interface. (This usually means restarting dhclient.)
Enable new routes. (May be a no-op as dhclient should do this.)

That should be it. You might want/need to turn down the old interface
with 'ifconfig INT down'.

I tool to do most of this for you is available at:
https://projects.fsck.ch/profile/

It's still in development, but generally works on current systems. It's
based on rcng, so it will not work on V4 systems.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634