From owner-freebsd-mobile Sat Sep 30 0:18:18 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org Received: from proxy2.ba.best.com (proxy2.ba.best.com [206.184.139.14]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A098237B502 for ; Sat, 30 Sep 2000 00:18:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rsf-laptop.live.com (dhcp0.live.com [208.184.148.170]) by proxy2.ba.best.com (8.9.3/8.9.2/best.out) with ESMTP id AAA23347 for ; Sat, 30 Sep 2000 00:16:51 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <4.3.1.1.20000929235725.00b74d30@localhost> X-Sender: rsf@localhost X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.1 Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 00:16:06 -0700 To: freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org From: Ross Finlayson Subject: WaveLAN "BSS mode" on FreeBSD? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org [I originally sent this question just to Bill Paul, but thought others in this group might also be able to answer it.] I have a Lucent WaveLAN/Orinoco card plugged into a FreeBSD box, and have been able to get it working OK in "ad hoc demo" mode, but I'd like to be able to get it working in BSS (aka "infrastructure") mode, so that the FreeBSD box can act as a 802.11 AP (& we can free ourselves from reliance on hardware running KarlNet software). My (perhaps limited) understanding of 802.11 is that the reason why BSS mode doesn't work for a 802.11 interface attached a 'vanilla' FreeBSD (or Linux, etc.) router is that - in this mode - a client node needs to be "authenticated" and "associated" with an access point (AP) before it can send or receive data packets, and that this requires a couple of low-level packet exchanges that don't happen automatically. I would like to implement an AP 'daemon' for FreeBSD that does this. At first, this daemon would just do the basic (null) authentication and association - so that basic data delivery can work - but later on it could - I hope - be extended to implement the packet buffering required to support "power saving" operation. Of course, this will be Open Source (probably GPL), and - I hope - will be portable to other Unixes as well. My plan was to have the daemon (i) put the "wi" device into BSS mode (& set the SSID), (ii) listen to the raw device for low-level 802.11 "authentication" and "association" request packets, and (iii) respond to these packets appropriately, so that the client node can proceed with regular data delivery. Unfortunately, I've hit a road block at step (ii): I can't hear anything from the "wi" device. Specifically, I first do wicontrol -i wi0 -n LIVE.COM wicontrol -i wi0 -q LIVE.COM wicontrol -i wi0 -p 1 to set the WaveLAN to BSS mode, using SSID "LIVE.COM". Then I do tcpdump -i wi0 -e to listen to the "wio" interface, while I try connecting with a WaveLAN client (a Windows NT laptop, with the WaveLAN card set to infrastructure mode using the same SSID ("LIVE.COM"). Unfortunately, I hear nothing. (I also hear nothing if I add the "-p" flag (don't use promiscuous mode) to the "tcpdump" command. Do you have any ideas here? Am I going about this the wrong way, or is there something more that we need to know about Lucent WaveLAN cards in order to get this to work? Ross. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message