Hi,

I want to set up a Linux box as a wireless router to replace our existing Netgear WNR1000 router, as I believe the Netgear does not support the coming IPv6 protocol. Unfortunately, it is not flashable with OpenWRT or DD-WRT presently.

As we have Comcast, our cable modem acts as a dumb modem according to the customer support guy I talked to, and our router is the one that asks for the IP address from DHCP. Thus, when Comcast switches over to IPv6, I don't believe my existing router would work, correct?

My idea is to take a Linux box and put two NICs and a wireless adapter in it, using IPCop or Smoothwall to set up a router. I could then enable IPv6 support for when we have IPv6 with Comcast. Is that possible? Would there be a way to get BIND to hand out private IP addresses in the same subnet on the both the LAN NIC and the wireless card?

Thanks!

Sam

I believe your biggest problem will be getting a wireless NIC that works well (or at all) as an access point. I suggest that before buying a wireless NIC you check if it works in "master mode" and that hostapd runs fine with it.

Here's my experience with network cards:
- the Atheros card in my Asus laptop (168c:002b, driver ath9k) works (but I have not done extensive testing)
- the Intel IPW4965 card in my Toshiba laptop (8086:4229, driver iwlagn) does not work
- USB cards based on Ralink rt2800 do not work
- I have heard that PCI cards based on Ralink rt2800 work, but I do not have one.

Also check how the operating system you want to use supports wireless NICs as access points. You may have to fiddle with the OS a little to get it to work (really just write a hostapd.conf and start hostapd).

If you are unable to get a working wireless NIC, an alternative is to just get a wireless access point and disable/ignore its router (also DHCP) functionality (i.e. plug nothing into its WAN port, connect one LAN port to your Linux router, connect other LAN ports to wired hosts).