[Bridge] Bridging IEEE 802.11b to wired ethernet - possible?

Sat, 09 Mar 2002 10:37:23 -0800

Hi,
 
I am doing a little home project in which I need to bridge between a wired LAN and a wireless LAN. I read some articles describing that bridging in Linux will not work with a wireless LAN interface. Is this true?
If this is not true, can anyone explain to me why?
 
 
I have the following situation:
  1. I have two locations with computer in my house. One is in the living room, one is in a closet
  2. My wife doesn't allow me to install any cabling between the two
  3. My ADSL connection is in the living room
  4. I have one Buffalo Airstation Wireless accesspoint/router/4-port switch (not supporting the PPTP needed for my ADSL)
  5. I have an iPAQ PocketPC with WLAN interface. Even though a WINS server is configurable, It doesn't seem to work with WINS. It just uses broadcast for name resulution, so I have a problem with microsoft networking when the server is not in the same segment as the PocketPC.
  6. I have a Laptop with WLAN interface
  7. I have one PCI WLAN card
I want to:
  1. Have (exactly) one Desktop PC in the living room
  2. Have all other PC's (NT server, Sun Sparc, Linux) in the closed
  3. Have wireless access to my home network from my Pocket PC and my laptop, including microsoft networking to my NT server and other Microsoft systems
  4. Use DHCP for client systems
  5. Access the Internet form any of these
A solution for all of this would be the following
 
 
ADSL Modem ----|                                             |-- Solaris
               |                                             |
Livingroom PC -|-- AccessPoint ===wireless=== Linux bridge --|-- NT Server
               |                |          |                 |
               |                |          |                 |
                       Living room                    PocketPC         Laptop                           Closet
 
 
 
This way, I have all systems in one subnet. I only have to route between my internal LAN and the Internet. For this, I use a Linux router/firewall that has a PPTP connection to the ADSL modem. I don't use the router in the accesspoint.
 
If I cannot bridge between the wireless and the wired interface, I have to route between the two LAN's in the Linux system. This means, the PocketPC and the NT server are in different subnets and I have problems with the microsoft networking between them (LMhosts file might make it work, but I don't like LMhosts files nor static entries in WINS). Also I then need DHCP relay in the router, which wouldn't be a problem. I just have no experience in this.
 
I know there are many ways to make it work. My project is to find a nice and professional solution though.
 
Any suggestions?
 
 
Perjan Moors
 
 

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