WDS with older firmware AP's?

[Pavel Roskin]

On Mon, 16 Feb 2004, Jason Straight wrote:

> > As I understand, the WDS support is only needed on the access points.
> > Clients (you mean stations, right?) don't use 4-address packets, so
> > they don't need new firmware for that purpose.  Intersil station
> > firmware 1.5.0 or newer is needed for an access point running HostAP
> > to support WDS.  If the other access point doesn't run HostAP it still
> > needs to support WDS. Whether it needs firmware upgrade is irrelevant
> > to HostAP - you should see the manual and possibly the site of the
> > vendor.
>
> Right, what I was referring to was: My station (linux running hostap
> with newest prism firmware), trying to act as a repeater to an access
> point which has old prism firmware on it (linksys WAP-11), and the card
> won't fit in my pcmcia port on my laptop so I cant flash it.

If you have hostap on both sides, you probably can set the access point
with the new firmware to use non-standard frames.  That's bit 2 in
get_wds. So if "iwpriv wlan0 getwds_type" gives 4, use "iwpriv wlan0
wds_type 0".

If Linksys WAP-11 uses tertiary firmware it probably supports standard
WDS.  Most access points load tertiary firwmare in RAM, so the version of
the secondary firmware doesn't matter.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin