share one wireless adapter's connection to second device (wireless bridge?)

["Jeremy C. Reed" <reed%reedmedia.net@localhost>]

I am using ral0 which is a USB-based Linksys Wireless-G network adapter. 
(I've been using it for 1.5 years on different NetBSD systems. It works 
well except I have to ping at least once every 170 seconds or it loses 
connection.) My ral0 has an IP assigned and I use it.

I have an external device that uses DHCP to get a connection. I was hoping 
I could just plug it to my NetBSD's unused re0 device (RealTek 8100E/8101E 
PCIe 10/100BaseTX (rev. 0x0)).

My first try was to create a bridge:

sudo ifconfig bridge0 create
sudo brconfig bridge0 add re0 add ral0 up

"brconfig -a" showed the bridge. After I turned on the device, "brconfig 
-a" showed three more entries in the "Address cache".

tcpdump on re0 shows a bunch of SIP, igmp, DHCP traffic from my device. I 
can also see traffic from my DHCP server (the wireless router in the other 
room) on my re0 device (which is not wireless but on the bridge0). (I also 
see 169.254.x.x traffic on re0.) (If you'd like me email this tcpdump 
output to you, let me know.)

But my device never got its networking up. I am guessing that I can't 
share multiple connections on that ral0 adapter. I don't know. (My ral0 
continued to work fine.)

I could easily use ipf/ipnat or pf share the existing address using 
address translation. But I'd prefer to not run a DHCP server for one 
device as I already have DHCPd on this network. I was wondering if I could 
pass the DHCP requests across, but then the address translation would make 
it appear from ral0 (which already has its own IP assigned).

My situation is that my office has no wired network but the device needs 
to be wired.

Any suggestions on sharing that ral0 device?

Or should I purchase some wireless bridge? What?

Or what can I do with NetBSD for this?



  Jeremy C. Reed