stupid question?

[daysleeper]

If i put an access point on my roof, running in AP mode. If X then puts his in bridge mode and connects to my ssid, and Y puts his in brigde mode can and connects to my ssid can?

Y "see" X ?

I "see" both?

also i think the microsoft client works to a certain extent between 2 peers, but isn't there better software?

or do you have to go the microtik route?

 

[Setsquare]

If you have Line Of Site,

Could do with 2x WRT54GL with decent results.

Could do it with 2x Mikrotik Routerboard 112 and cm9 radios with even better results

Just depends how much you want to spend I suspose

 

[henkk78]

daysleeper, i'll try to answer your question:

On 'Physical Layer' level, Y can't "see" X.

However, depending on your network setup, they can be on the same network. I.e. they can "talk" to each other even though they can't "see" each other.

Hope that helps...

Now my question to the techheads: Is Y aware of X on a MAC level?

 

[Highflyer_GP]

On the MAC layer I'm sure it's possible if they operate in bridge mode, since bridges function at the MAC layer. Think of an AP as a wireless switch, there's a LAN-side, and an Air-side. The wired side (i.e. daysleeper's) connection to the AP would be the LAN-side. X and Y would be a wireless connection to the LAN. They should therefore be able to see each other as if they were on a wired LAN, and he would definitely be able to see them.

 

[wiki]

all depends on if u have default forward enabled

 

[daysleeper]

Okay so if i set up my SSID to AP mode and two other dudes connect to my SSID in brigde mode and we agree on an IP range the dudes will be able to ping each other's ips?

Am I missing something, because JAWUG and those kids use a "modded" firmware to set up these meshes?

last question, do i need an AP for every antenna i put up? and if so, can i connect the APs to each other with the rj45s?

 

[Ryder_JHB]

Daysleeper, we don't really use anything other than the custom Linux firmwares that are available for the Linksys routers - I use Freifunk, and most of the guys use Openwrt - nothing special - readily available.

 

[daffy]

A few of the basics on the 802.11 standard.

Clients connect to AP's.
AP's cannot connect to AP's (Yes, there is WDS, but thats another story)

When a Client connects to an AP, there is a whole process of authentication and association.
Once associated, the AP knows the MAC of the Client, and starts accepting traffic for associated MACs.
The way the standard was designed, is that the AP _ONLY_ accepts traffic from the same MAC that has associated to it.

This posses a bit of a problem when you want to bridge multiple MACs into the wireless network, through 1 client radio.
Some client "bridges" do nasty things like Proxy-ARP (Changing the MAC address to match the wireless MAC.. eg: NAT on MAC's).

Some AP's break the rules a bit, and just accept traffic from and MAC address.. kinda silly.

The reason we use a custom firmware on the WRT, is so we can route the traffic instead of doing nasty things like Proxy-ARP.