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On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 15:29:41 -0400, Skip Gundlach said:
... How come/can my computer see and talk to shore points without knowing all the Mac stuff, but a bridge can't? It doesn't need to. On any network, machines see each other's MAC addresses, that's what is established when you join the network. Probably my advice is somewhat confused by your use of the word bridge. In networks, you might find it easier to think of a bridge as a two-port hub. Packets that come in one end are duplicated at the other. A bridge that joins a wireless network and a wired one is not different in this regard, just the "ports" are internal to the unit, which probably has a wireless "hub" and an ethernet switch, joined by the bridge. The problem as I understand what you are trying to do, is that you want to run the device as an access point in infrastructure BSS (basic service set) mode, so that your laptop can talk to it as a client, but also to act as a client and communicate with another access point. For your laptop to comminucate with your access point, the access point must be configured to offer a wireless network to join. The "local" wireless network is identified by a SSID, which really is the mac of the wireless interface on the access point. On the other hand, to join another wireless network would mean not doing that, but rather acting as your laptop does when it joins to your local network. This is why I suggested the simplest solution is to use two wireless devices connected *to each other* by ethernet. You have one device configured to act as the BSS mode access point, and the other to act as a wireless ethernet client. You'd configure your local wireless network on the first, and join it with your laptop. You should then be able to communicate with the other over the wireless link to the access point, and then the ethernet. You'd then be remote-controlling the masthead "client" device, and use it to connect to other networks. Realistically, one or other of these devices would need to also be a router that can do network address translation (NAT) once the data link layer is established, but that's beyond the scope of getting that link established in the first place. It is certainly possible for all this functionality to be combined in one device, but I'd strongly suspect that no such device exists. Consider the material above, and the very specific context you are outlining. I acknowledge being just smart enough to be dangerous but implicitly, if some other device can do it, another should be able to, no? Well, you didn't answer my question earlier about whether you were trying to connect two network devices with a straight through or a crossover cable. It shouldn't be complex: you can buy pre-made crossover cables as readily as you can straight through ones. --Damian |
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