Re: [9front] rpi4 wifi USB dongle

[Daniel Morandini <danielmorandini@me.com>]

> An ethernet client is a computer with a mac address.
> 
> Given you have a group of M clients and another group of N clients and
> you want to connect them, plug the M clients into a switch with M+1
> ports on one side and the N clients into a switch with N+1 ports on
> the other side, then use the remaining port and a long cable to
> connect them together.
> 
> Imagine now the M-AP is a wifi router, and you want to connect it to
the N (not AP) over wifi.
> 
> but here when wifi comes into play not every client is the same. you
> have many wifi stations and just one wifi *ap*, if we make M-AP the
> wifi AP, you can bridge all the M clients just fine. that works on AP
> side.
You mean “that works on M side" right?

> But if you want to bridge a wifi *station* on the other side, you can
> not. a station can only bridge N=1 mac addresses into a wifi.
I’m getting there: practically I would have to make N-AP connect as a
client to M-AP to keep the only one ap limitation, but at that point
the new link would not be able to mux more than one ethernet client
becoming useless for my usecase, did I get it right?

> We have some code in 9front called mat damon, which is like NAT, but
> for MAC addresses instead of IP addresses. This way one mac address
> can hide all the N other mac addresses and translate between them. But
> that's obviously a layer violation, a stupid hack that only exists due
> to the limitation of wifi.
:D

dan