Hub with wireless uplink or FreeBSD wireless adaptor?

Tue Mar 9 17:06:52 PST 2004

Quoting Danny Howard (djh at servercentral.net):
> Fellow SysAdmins:
> 
> I have free wireless access in my house, but no CAT5.  I have borrowed a 
> Belkin USB-802.11b adaptor that work fine with XP.
> But I want to get going with FreeBSD.  And the support for wireless 
> adaptors is less than comprehensive.
> An ideal solution may be a hub that can bridge its wired connections to 
> its wireless uplink.

Ya mean like an Apple Airport?  I don't believe direction to "out"
is mandated anywhere.

> Given my understanding of wireless and ethernet technologies, this seems 
> a bit weird.  (Are WEP keys tied to IPs?)
WEP is not tied to IPs.  I'm mostly WEP free.  IPSec is the place
ya otta be cause wep is crap.

> Has anyone experience with a situation like this, and can recommend 
> either a good "wireless uplink hub" or, alternatively, a favored 
> wireless adaptor that I could use with a FreeBSD desktop?

www.netgate.com - based in Spokane - has been great for me.
I've used miniPCI or PCCards from there.  They're a couple (2? 3?)
folks who actually run Unix and are active in support boards for
various things.

If they say it works with FreeBSD, then it will.

So you might find it best to get a PCI->miniPCI or PCCard adapter
and a card with an antenna (many PCCards don't have that anymore, esp
for 802.11g) and run with that.

To digress a bit:
I use Open, Net and Free BSD on Soekris boxes ('bought the size of
a 6 port switch, 12VDC, boot from compact flash.  2-3 ethernets).

Free and perhaps Net support the 802.11g (and 11a) cards.  Open
won't put Atheros proprietary drivers in their distro for reasons
I get.  IT's kinda nice running a full unix on a totally silent
machine with no moving parts that draws nightlight power.

And its a NATbox, IPSec and IPv6 endpoint, Firewall, and home
controller (X10 and some digital IO via a terminal server).