Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 11:58:35 -0400 (EDT) From: Jim Flowers <jflowers@peony.ezo.net> To: Ross Finlayson <finlayson@live.com> Cc: freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: WaveLAN "BSS mode" on FreeBSD? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0009301147280.1698-100000@peony.ezo.net> In-Reply-To: <4.3.1.1.20000929235725.00b74d30@localhost>
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You have a number of hurdles here. First get the latest firmware and
upgrade a couple of cards. I think it is 6.01. It works with Bill Paul's
driver to provide a BSS ad hoc node (really). Portables with the same
firmware will find the network name and follow any frequency changes you
make in the base station so apparantly the beacons are working.
Unfortunately, the ad-hoc demo mode part limits the raw data rate to 2
Mbps and I think you may not be able to get around that. From what I
remember looking at this when 802.11 cards first came out the mode is
established by writing to a register in the modem memory. That would
suggest that all of the code that implements modes is
inaccessible. Without the higher speed capability, creating a fbsd base
station has limited appeal.
Bill may know if it is possible. Hopefully, he will comment.
Good luck. Meantime, I'll continue to use WavePOINT IIs.
You can find more information by looking at recent posts or in the user
forum at www.wavelan.com (you have to register to see it).
Jim Flowers <jflowers@ezo.net>
#4 ranked ISP on C|NET #1 in Ohio
On Sat, 30 Sep 2000, Ross Finlayson wrote:
> [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.
>
>
>
>
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