Hi, Damian, and thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'm sorry, I appeared to
have missed this one before. It appears it may have the germ of a
solution....

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.

Gotcha, I think. Certainly, when I ask for info on either of the two
programs I currently use (one came with the machine, the other came with the
Hawking external antenna), I can get all the IPs of my machine, the external
machine/network and my assigned address thereon.

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.

Gotcha. And, that does help the visualization.

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.

Also, gotcha. The antenna is the wireless end, and the RJ45 port is the
wired end, the bridge being the "hub" in the middle. The wireless end can
see any number (in the point-to-multipoint mode) of shoreside "ports" - my
challenge is to choose which I want to talk to.

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.

I believe that's correct, though I didn't know the terminology. I just want
to be able to get on my laptop and talk to shore, using (on my laptop)
"masthead" (the name of the port to which my laptop is communicating) to
talk to "shoreside" (the bridge/router/hub which sees shore points), in
order to isolate which of the shore points' info makes it to (and back out
for transmission after I've done something with info) the wifi in my laptop.

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.

I'm not quite getting this one. When I crank up the laptop, and the
internal wifi engages, the strongest signal (since it's right above me) will
be "masthead" - so it goes to that one, first. So far, so good. "Masthead
is wired (cat5 crossover) to "shoreside" - which, I hope, will see lots of
points ashore. However, I need to be able to communicate with "shoreside"
in order to tell it which one to which I want to talk. From the above, I
gather there's a challenge in that, somewhere? If "masthead" were something
else, would that solve the problem (that is, not an AP), but still allow
"shoreside" to tell me what it sees, and let me choose?

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.

Aha :{)) So, given the foregoing...

I do something on my internal wifi configuration to automate the connection
to the BSS (not yet understanding that terminology, but, then, I don't
understand how the cpu does its stuff, either - it's enough that it does!),
which, then, passes me through to the bridge in the boot-up stages, and from
there I choose the shoreside point for communication? For example, in my
bench testing, I gave it the same class of IP as the one I was trying to
reach on the bench. Thus, I fixed the IP in the wifi as, say,
192.168.100.160, so it could talk to my bridge which has a default of
192.168.100.1. If that's the key, I'm certainly ok with that (but it
apparently will have to be something other than the same AP as I had
connected to the bridge, as - for whatever reason - that seems to be the
cause of the IP conflicts, despite their being totally disparate
configurations [one being, e.g., 192etc and the other 10.10.10.150]) - but
will need to find out what other device I need to get.

And, to reiterate, having apparently not been clear in the past, I have no
problem with connecting the two of these, however needed (presumed XO
cat5) - I just don't want to connect my computer with a wire to anything.
From what you've said, that's a do-able project. (?)

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.

Heh. One device is just frosting. I can rube goldberg with the best of
them :{))

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.

Gotcha. I made up a 3" so as to not waste space with unused length in the
NEMA, but they still didn't work, whether factory 6' or my 3", on the bench.
Sorry I missed that one.

So, given all the foregoing, I've got, in hand, two (only might need one)
senao 2611 highpower (200mw, 23dB) deluxe units. Curiously, they are just
the PCMCIA 200mw card on a board; they have two antenna attachment points to
which one can put an external antenna. The vendor, in frustration, had me
take one out and put it into the laptop to see if that changed matters, and
to prove that it worked there. Either can be either a bridge, in either of
point-to-point or point-to-multipoint modes, or an AP. Their software is
accessible via http address, and shows which IPs are 'associated' in the
case of the AP (which ones have been recognized) and among which to choose
in the case of the bridge.

Given that they've emphatically shown that they won't play well together
when we try to be able to talk to them (needing a specific mac, rather than
dhcp, else we couldn't find them? I'd been instructed by the vendor to begin
by naming my wifi or nic, whichever I was on during the bench tests, the
same basic [i.e. 192.168etc] set as the device), I can't seem to use the two
of them. However, as they're great items by themselves, perhaps something
else than the AP to connect to the bridge is the solution?

Thanks again for your input. I think we may possibly be going down the
right trail.

L8R

Skip, awaiting the arrival of the nav computer later today, on which all
this will happen!

--
Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig
http://tinyurl.com/384p2 The vessel as Tehamana, as we bought her

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you
didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail
away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore.
Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain