Wireless Bridge

[Brian Capouch]

I'm trying to bridge two wired Ethernet segments using HostAP, and I 
have run into a couple of stumbles that I hope someone in the community 
might know how to work around.

The network in question has been set up (by someone else) to use flat IP 
addressing, and traffic is a mixture of IP and IPX.

They are currently using a old, proprietary, slow wireless bridge from 
Speedlan.

There would be no managed stations on the link; the intent is a simple 
point-to-point link in order to bridge the two wired LANS.

Here are the issues:

1. I could not seem to use the WDS-based setup described in the hostap 
README unless I set up both wireless ends in Master mode.  Will the WDS 
technique not work in IBSS ("ad-hoc") mode?

2. Because of the mixture of IP and IPX I am not certain as to the best 
way to secure the link.  Especially after reading the convolutions in 
some of the recent mails about wireless bridging and traffic control, I 
wonder if there is any way to use IPSec to secure a link of this type, 
or whether WEP is going to be my only practical choice.

Thanks in advance for any help that might be out there.

B.