On Fri, 2002-04-12 at 12:21, Tim Howe wrote: > Is anybody in Eugene still thinking about Wi-Fi? > > I just thought I'de mention that code is now available (At least for BSD) that can >turn certain wireless cards into wireless access points by putting them in AP mode. >This can turn a $90 wireless card into a $850(?) access point. Also, using IP sec, >you can eliminate the weakness of WEP security. We have tried it here and it works >(at least between two OpenBSD machines). > > TimH All Intersil Prism2(2.5 & 3) based cards can be configured as an AP. In fact I recently discovered that my Netgear, ME102, access point uses a Prism2, like my SMC2632w. The only difference between the two chips is the ME102 has newer firmware. SMC happens to be the only vendor(I know of) that releases updates for customer firmware... which are still behind my ME102...
In the past people wanting to use a Prism2 as an AP had to procure a bootleged (AP) firmware update or perform some deep-magic (perhaps the wlan-ng drivers). Thankfully Jouni Malinen from the SSH Comm. Sec. Corp. has done great work on a new driver. His, "Host AP" driver is bridgable, uses wireless-tools, installs/compiles effortlessly using a pcmcia enabled Kernel (& using the pcmcia-cs package requires ~2 extra commands). NOTE: WEP is unusable in AP mode. http://people.ssh.com/jkm/Prism2/ The firmware update can be found through SMC and is at http://www.smc.com/drivers_downloads/library/Upgrade_8C3_Firmware.zip -- Matt
