FreeBSD Wireless Acces Point

[Erik Osterholm]

On Thu, Nov 24, 2005 at 05:11:04PM -0500, Tim Holmes wrote:
> 
> I just picked up a LinkSys WMP55AG, and installed it.  I added the 
> wlan and ath options to the kernel and rebuilt it with out fail.
> I'm running 5.4-STABLE, and this machine is my gateway.  It already
> had 2 NICs to handle this.  I know want it to handle any wireless
> traffic as well.
> 
> I've searched for Wireless Access Point HOW-TOs, and they all seem
> to have out dated information.  Suggesting commands that are
> depreciated.  None of them show how to set this up in /etc/rc.conf
> either, so everything runs at boot.
> 
> Does anybody have a recent HOW-TO that will help me set this and 
> wireless security up?  Or any sort of notes anybody's used in the past.
> 
> Thanks in advance for the help.
> 
> Happy Holidays!
> tdh

I just did this on FreeBSD 6.0, so maybe my experiences can help.

My setup:  

      ziggy
     ------- wireless ______________
inet |     |==========| wifinet    |
-----|fbsd |          --------------
     | 6.0 |----------| wirednet   |
     -------   wired  --------------

ziggy serves DHCP over the wired and wireless links, and gets dhcp
from inet.  Obviously I have two nics and a wireless card, which
happens to use the Atheros chipset.

In my rc.conf, I set up my wireless card:

ifconfig_ath0="ssid airport01 media autoselect mode 11g mediaopt \
	 hostap wepmode on wepkey `cat /etc/wepkey` channel 1 up"
ifconfig_ath0_alias0="inet 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0"

and I enable ziggy as a gateway (I assume you're doing this already
anyway):
gateway_enable="YES"


Then I bridge my wireless and wired connections.  I use the new
if_bridge, which isn't available in 5.4.  You could probably use
netgraph bridging or the deprecated kernel bridge interface.  An
example of netgraph bridging is in
/usr/share/examples/netgraph/ether.bridge 

Once the interfaces are bridged, you should be golden.  I run dhcpd on
ath0 to server DHCP on my wired and wireless lans.


Of course, the important part is the bridge.  You could assign the IP
to your wired and bridge the wireless to that just fine, if you
already have some of that set up.

Erik