Re: [9front] rpi4 wifi USB dongle

[hiro <23hiro@gmail.com>]

Because, you can have only one AP in a wifi network, this line needs
some fixing. sent too fast:
> Imagine now the M-AP is a wifi router, and you want to connect it to
the N-AP over wifi.

Imagine now the M-AP is a wifi router, and you want to connect it to
the N (not AP) over wifi.

On 3/4/21, hiro <23hiro@gmail.com> wrote:
> I can tell you generally.
>
> 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-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.
> 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.
>
> So, with wifi, either M or N has to be 1. Useless, no?
>
> 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.
>
> On 3/4/21, Daniel Morandini <danielmorandini@me.com> wrote:
>>> BPL + ethernet maybe? At least you don't have to drill a hole.
>>> powerline is really bad
>> BPL is Broadband Power Line right? This house is wired with very
>> old copper wires (not twisted), I bet I would not get much out of
>> it, but thanks for the suggestion.
>>
>>> Richard Miller's plan 9 image supports wifi on these machines.
>>> As of now there is no wifi dongle support in 9front. You can use an
>>> older
>>> Android phone's usb tethering (no cell service needed) with nusb/ether
>>> in
>>> rndis mode.
>>> i used to use an external wifi bridge over ethernet
>> These are all valuable options, thank you, but hiro is making me think:
>>
>>> keep in mind wifi cannot really bridge more than one IP (sadly the
>> wifi src/destination fields cannot be mapped to ethernet mac addresses
>> properly).
>> Could you please expand this a little bit more (possibly with
>> references)?  I’ve attached to this email a little handmade diagram
>> of my home setup.  The line tagged with “long eth cable” was the
>> one that I wanted to replace with a wireless connection to some
>> receiver device that eventually ethernets with the switch, but still
>> I would have had to check what 802.11 is allowing me to do. What
>> you tell makes me think that that protocol in this setup in that
>> position is not really a viable option right?
>>
>>> drilling holes is not so bad
>> Indeed, this is what I’m going to go for :D
>>
>> Thank you very much for your help so far,
>> dan
>>
>>
>