> I know from experience with 802.11g cards that there is usually an "Ad-Hoc"
> mode where one NIC on computer A talks to one NIC on computer B. But my
> understanding is that then for computer C to computer A, A would need a
> separate NIC, or would need to wait until B is no longer associated with A.
> I haven't had an opportunity to closely examine the 11n series cards to see
> if they do the same thing, and I've not had an opportunity at all to look
> at any 11ac series cards at all. So perhaps this is no longer an issue.
> However, if that is the issue, then obviously Ad-Hoc mode won't work. But
> the only way I ever saw "Managed" mode working was when it would connect to
> a physical AP/Router.
The wireless situation is a bit difficult because you need to get a
WiFi adapter with a chipset that supports the right driver interfaces
to support this, and consumer WiFi devices rarely advertise the
chipset they use and often switch chipsets without changing the
product name.
If you can manage to get a WiFi adapter that uses the kernel SoftMAC
interface, it will likely also support SoftAP mode. If it does, you
can run a program called `softapd` that will manage connections and
authentications for you so that the other devices can run in Managed
mode. This has little to do with the 802.11 draft version and more to
do with how the chipset is designed. The Atheros chipsets are usually
a good bet, as they've been very Linux-friendly, but there are some
others as well.
Assuming you can get those to work, you'll then need to bridge the
ethernet and WiFi interfaces using the kernel bridging interfaces.
Then you can run dnsmasq or whatever to manage IP address assignment
evenly across wired and wireless clients.
Hopefully this gets you pointed in the right direction, but I haven't
got time to do further research on it.
--Levi
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