Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:19:28 +0200 From: Manolis Kiagias <sonic2000gr@gmail.com> To: Nerius Landys <nlandys@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Wireless router? Message-ID: <49501270.6020603@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <560f92640812221349y683a7cbhce8ae0f22a8bedf0@mail.gmail.com> References: <560f92640812221349y683a7cbhce8ae0f22a8bedf0@mail.gmail.com>
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Nerius Landys wrote: > I have a PC with FreeBSD set up as a router (NAT). The PC has several > network cards and I'm grouping the internal-facing network cards as a > bridge (promiscuous mode for the interfaces). Everything works well. > > Now I'd like to extend my wired network to include wireless. I really > have no experience with wireless networks. I have a couple of > computers that are wireless-ready (a laptop and a Playstation 3 that I > won in a raffle). Is it possible to somehow add some hardware to my > FreeBSD router PC to make it into a wireless router? What kind of > hardware would I install? What is it called? The PC only has PCI > slots, can you recommend a brand and model of "wireless server > equiptment" if such a thing exists? Would a normal wireless card > suffice? What model should I get? Yes, a supported Wireless net card would suffice. It can be configured to work in "Access Point" mode, essentially what a cheap wireless router would. Instructions in section 32.3.5 here: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/network-wireless.html While I haven't used FreeBSD in this mode, from my experience atheros-based (ath(4)) cards work well. I have no less than three Dlink DWL-G520 cards and never had any problems. This is a rather older model now, newer atheros cards may need a newer HAL than the one currently in the source tree (e.g. the Aspire One uses a newer atheros, and needs a custom kernel with some of the original files replaced. I believe -CURRENT has the newer HAL though). I recently also got a Linksys WMP 54G that is based on a Ralink chipset (ral(4)). This also works nicely. > I would prefer to set up static > internal IPs for my wireless network at home, would this be possible? > Sure. I am using static IPs in all my wireless clients. > Or is DHCP the way to go (I hesitate at the thought of configuring a > DHCP server). > > Configuring a DHCP server is very easy. I've only used it with wired ethernet though. Have a read at this: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/network-dhcp.html > Another way to go is to hook up a standalone wireless router appliance > to my FreeBSD machine's network interface (one of the interfaces). I > already have such a device, I think it's made by Linksys. But then, I > would be NAT'ing both through the FreeBSD machine and through the > wireless router. So it would be a double-NAT so to speak. Is there > anything wrong with that approach? > I've used something similar and it worked. Don't know about possible drawbacks, cause it was only a toy for me. My setup was something like this: Wireless standalone router (built in NAT) --> FreeBSD system as wireless client of the router + wired ethernet card --> FreeBSD NAT using pf / ipfw --> Wired internal ethernet (with DHCP server) --> Wired client(s) So I guess your approach is also possible. > So in a nutshell, I have a wired FreeBSD router with multiple ethernet > jacks at home, and I want to extend it to include wireless network. > Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks. > Probably multiple solutions exist, start up by buying a cheap but supported wireless card.
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