Return-path: Received: from mail.candelatech.com ([208.74.158.172]:49320 "EHLO ns3.lanforge.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756223Ab1HDAoG (ORCPT ); Wed, 3 Aug 2011 20:44:06 -0400 Message-ID: <4E39EB52.1090401@candelatech.com> (sfid-20110804_024410_060046_A41400F5) Date: Wed, 03 Aug 2011 17:44:02 -0700 From: Ben Greear MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Sam Leffler CC: "linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org" Subject: Re: Bridging wired to STA interfaces. References: <4E38DDB3.1030801@candelatech.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On 08/03/2011 03:37 PM, Sam Leffler wrote: > On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 10:33 PM, Ben Greear wrote: >> We have some interest in being able to bridge wired systems to >> (virtual) STA interfaces, primarily for using third-party >> traffic generation tools over virtual stations. >> >> I was thinking of writing a sta-bridge module that mapped >> incoming packets on a wired interface to a STA with MAC >> that matched the source MAC of the packet. All packets >> received on the STA would be forwarded un-modified out >> the wired port. >> >> I think this would allow someone to create a STA interface >> with MAC matching a PC connected to the wired port and effectively >> have it be a transparent bridge between STA and PC. >> >> Has anyone attempted something like this before? >> >> Any interest in having this feature in the upstream kernel? > > You've just described what's done in several products and it is indeed > useful. The main issue is supporting it can incur overhead so you may > want to make it a compile-time option. I got some basic functionality working today with some user-space bridging code I've already written for other purposes... Can you think of any reason (beyond a bit of performance) that this should be in the kernel? My target hardware is fast enough that copying through user-space at moderate (ie, fast as STA can go) speeds isn't too big of a deal, but if someone wanted to run this on weak hardware, that might be reason enough... It might also make it easier to filter our management frames (EAPOL, etc), but we should be able to do that easily enough in user-space with a small bit of work. Thanks, Ben > > -Sam > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html -- Ben Greear Candela Technologies Inc http://www.candelatech.com