vector 4.3 wifi-ethernet bridge for XP client
 

Howdy,

First time post, long time reader. I loaded a lightweight distro called vector 4.3 ( basically a trimmed down version of slack ) running kernel 2.6. It's on a 200mmx with 64MB ram and i must say i'm pretty impressed so far. It is a router/firewall for my network using gShield as the firewall. I want to set up my wife's XP system (upstairs) on the network (in the basement) using wifi (2 motorola wpci810g cards). Here are the interfaces on the router: eth0(dhcp) outside internet, eth1(192.168.1.1) internal gateway, wlan0(wpci810g wifi card). From what i have read i need to bridge eth1 and wlan0 together for it to work. I have downloaded and installed: ndiswrapper, bridge-utils, openvpn. They all installed and work fine from what i can tell, but i seem to be missing the mark somewhere. Here is my ifconfig:

br0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0F:66:E6:62:C8
inet addr:192.168.1.1 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:468 (468.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:80:AD:70:C6:46
inet addr:24.17.233.34 Bcast:255.255.255.255 Mask:255.255.254.0
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:847807 errors:17 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:17
TX packets:119735 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:322615333 (307.6 Mb) TX bytes:8433622 (8.0 Mb)
Interrupt:3 Base address:0xe000

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:40:F4:5E:7B:E6
UP BROADCAST RUNNING PROMISC MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:120126 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:205988 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:8953182 (8.5 Mb) TX bytes:282886886 (269.7 Mb)
Interrupt:9 Base address:0xd800

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:55 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:55 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:6160 (6.0 Kb) TX bytes:6160 (6.0 Kb)

tap0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:FF:FB:80:B2:64
UP BROADCAST RUNNING PROMISC MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:4 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0F:66:E6:62:C8
UP BROADCAST RUNNING PROMISC MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:994 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:173679 (169.6 Kb)
Interrupt:10 Memory:e6000000-e6001fff

I noticed the MAC for wlan0 and br0 are the same.
All the clients in the LAN can ping each other and br0.
winXP cant ping anything or be pinged (pung?). I manually set its ip configuration with my router settings.
Now the questions: Are the physical locations a problem? Do i really need to bridge eth1 and wlan0? Can i make my router an access point? Do i need to make an ad-hoc or managed network?

Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated by me and my wife.
If you need any more info please let me know.

;)

Thanks so much for reading this drivel
chris