Forwarding wifi connectivity from one router through a single-card Wifi computer
 

Hello to the group

I'm not sure exactly what they call what I want to do, and "wireless" and "wifi" produce *WAY* too many hits to sift through, so if this has been answered somewhere else, please kindly post a link to the thread and I'll be on my way -- I don't want to repeat an already answered question, so I apologize in advance if I am...


What I have is a wireless setup for the home computers. There are 4 or 5 devices using my home setup, so I really DON'T want to change it. I have two more devices that for some reason do not appear to be compatible (T-Mobile / Google / HTC "G1" phones).

What I want to do, is take my Linux computer with its Atheros card, and get Internet to that computer using the same home router connection I've had for two years, and turn around with that same device, and emulate a SECOND WiFi network on top of the first (or beside, or whatever) so that on my Linux machine I can still surf the web while simultaneously serving a WiFi network that my phone will work with.

(1) what is this called, so I can research it better/more efficiently?
(2) how do I do it?



Thank you so much in advance!

CJ





[Edit]
After searching a little more, I think this is called "Virtual Access Point". I'm not sure.

Two things MUST happen: One, my Linux computer remains connected to the hardware WAP, and continues inbound and outbound Internet traffic normally, as it always has; and two, that same computer provides a WiFi connection to another device using a different encryption method (WPA vs. WEP, etc.) than the hardware WAP.

Am I making any sense?
[/edit]

Forgive my faux pas of replying to my own post...

I've gotten so far as to connect -- even if no data will transfer -- from my phone to my linux box with linux acting as an access point, but I still now cannot get the box to connect to the real wap.

Ath0 is master mode (simulated wap), ath1 is wifi connex to the real WAP (that now won't connect to the real WAP even though all settings appear to be correct)... I'll keep hammering on until I figure something out...

Not sure if this matters or not, but if you have input coming into ath1 wouldn't you need to forward any data requests on to ath0 so that it in turn can pass them on to your router/web connection? I'm thinking IP tables needs to be modified to allow if1 to pass info to if2, not sure if this is called ip forwarding or not...

Yeah, you're probably right. And I don't know enough about IPTables to screw with it.

In fact, I gave in. After researching on the router's self help popup itself if I really needed PSK on my WEP, turns out PSK does nothing toward encrypting the signal. I guess it's just used by both ends to connect to a system that already has encryption whereas without it the encryption code might be sent cleartext (I'm assuming, I really don't know).


Turned out to be such a PITA that I decided to drop PSK and just use WEP. The only ones in the area who would know what to do with it are the ham radio operator across the street and the person typing this post. *shrugs*