Knoppix as a wireless bridge?

**adamm** · 06-05-2003, 04:56 AM

As of right now at my home I have setup knoppix as a dialup router, and I'm pretty well versed in linux routers. The issue I'm facing is that I'm fixing to move into a home I purchaced next to my parents house, and I would like to network the two houses together wirelessly. Here is the plan.

What I would like to do is have a Linksys WAP11 access point at my mom's house and use a knoppix box at my house that has a WUSB11 adapter and a regular network card and bridge eth0 and wlan0.

Here is the setup I would like:

(mom's house);
home router[2.254]------> wap11[2.253] -->
++wireless hop+++

(my house);
knoppix wifi card[2.252]--------> knoppix eth0[2.251]------> my switch--------> my wap11 for my home network[2.250]-------> my wireless laptop[2.118]
My desktop would also be plugged into my switch with the address of [2.249]

Is this possible? I would rather have everything on one subnet instead of having 192.168.3.0 network at my house and 192.168.2.0 at her house and the wifi side of my knoppix box with knoppix acting as a router between subnets. I know it wouldn't be routing because you don't route packets on the same subnet, but is there a way to do this with iptables just to bridge eth0 and wlan0? I guess I'm trying to make knoppix into a poor mans linksys WET11 Wireless bridge.

Sorry for the long post, but I figured it was best to explain the whole situation.

Thanks!

**garyng** · 06-05-2003, 05:52 AM

is that possible ? I believe in order for this to happen, the linksys must also support bridge function or the packet on the other side just won't come over(and vice versa).

Why not just 2 sub-net which would make things simpler ?

**adamm** · 06-05-2003, 03:22 PM

The linksys WAP11 supports a bridge function, but instead of using the WAP11 in bridge mode, I was going to put it in infrastructure mode and set it up in a window at my moms and put the wireless adapter on my knoppix box in a window at my house, and just have the knoppix box be a client off of the WAP11.
I just didn't want to have a seperate subnet on the eth0 side of my knoppix box. I would rather have eth0 and wlan0 be on the same subnet and have the traffic from my house to her's pass transparently through the knoppix machine.

**mfidel** · 06-05-2003, 03:54 PM

What you are proposing is not only feasable but I am doing it, though I am not using knoppix in my bridge I am using OpenBSD, but the configuration should roughly be the same. What you are doing is turning a$700 computer into a $5.00 bridge.

in the /etc just configure the interfaces:

not as dhcp
not to a static ip but as "up"

example

hostnamexl0
#dhchp
#inet
up

then
hostnamexl11
#dhcp
#inet
up

you can also add packet filtering or have the bridge do NAT

since you want to use knoppix though and knoppix is debian based I reccomend you read the following: http://www.wlug.org.nz/WirelessEthernetBridge

take care and good luck,

**adamm** · 06-05-2003, 03:59 PM

Thanks for the replies!
I think I'm going to just get 2 WAP11s and call it a day. Although, I will attempt this project just for the sake of knowing how to do it.

I do however wish that a wireless bridge was $5, I would use them for everything! Unfortunatly the linksys WET11 wireless bridge is more expensive than a WAP11. So what do I do, buy a WAP11 and put it in bridge mode.