FreeBSD Wireless Access Points with Atheros Cards

[Nick Withers]

On Wed, 7 Jun 2006 16:05:08 -0400
John Nielsen <lists at jnielsen.net> wrote:

> On Wednesday 07 June 2006 11:42, Mark Moellering wrote:
> > On Wednesday 07 June 2006 8:11 am, Nick Withers wrote:

(snip)

> > > My question, then, is this: Is the access point I've set up not
> > > actually functioning as an access point in the strictest sense
> > > of the term? Is the Handbook in need of a little attention in
> > > this area?
> > >
> > > I'll happily create a patch for the doc and submit a PR to
> > > have it updated, but just wanted to check before doing so that
> > > I'm not just being an idiot (I'm particularly good at that!).
> 
> > 	I tried this maybe a month back.  I added an ath card to a firewall
> > (becoming the third NIC) and set it up following the directions.  While I
> > could connect to the access point/firewall, I could not get to anything
> > beyond it.  After some reading, I decdied to buy a standalone access point
> > and replace the wireless ath card with a wired card to use to connect to
> > the access point. The standalone access point (Netgear) wasn't that much
> > more than the card and from everything I have read is the better way to go.
> > 	If you are able to sned data through the access point, I would love to
> > hear about it...
> 
> Yes, ath(4) is actually the preferred driver for creating FreeBSD-based 
> wireless access points, and the handbook probably does need to be updated. No 
> one has been doing any work on the wi driver in quite some time, whereas Sam 
> Leffler has been doing a LOT of work to keep ath up-to-date and highly 
> functional.

Righto, cheers for that. I've started drafting an update that
I'll try to get in soon (depending on how much exam
procrastination I can pack in!).

> I run a FreeBSD 6-STABLE machine as an access point at home and it works fine. 
> I couldn't get it to work with if_bridge, so I just set up wireless to be its 
> own subnet with the FreeBSD machine doing NAT and routing between the three 
> interfaces (external, internal wired, and internal wireless).

Sounds fairly similar to what I did. These guys didn't want an
internal wired network though...

> JN
-- 
Nick Withers
email: nick at nickwithers.com
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