From: Keith Heinemann (khmann_at_performance-data.com)
Date: 2002-01-12 23:04:00 UTC
> Eric Johanson wrote:
>
> Hi there!
>
> I love the driver, works great for me.
>
> Some questions about it, however:
>
> It's looking like it 'fakes' an AP by grabbing the broadcast pings, and
> replying with stuff that makes it look like an AP. I could be wrong on
> this, but if you could do the same thing with a Hermes based chipset, then
> it could be put into AP mode as well.
I'm not really a source of authority, but my understanding is that the Prism2 chipset includes some hostAP specific features such as the sending of 'beacons' and other time-critical functions in hardware. Promisc. mode is supported and you can bridge with the interface/driver- this means that the Prism is capable of generating frames with a source MAC address other than it's own. My understanding is that lots of other cards can't send frames with different source MAC addresses, and thus can't be used for bridging. although you could use proxyarp to fake bridging, it would be limited to IP traffic and broadcasts might be a problem. (someone please correct me if I'm wrong)
> I'm sure the question of 'does it work with XXX card, based on the hermes
> chipset' has comeup a number of times on this list (but I'm new here, so I
> gotta ask..) <grin>.
sorry, haven't been around long enough myself to know :)
>
> What features of the prism2 based cards are you guys using to make this
> happen? Does it have anything to do with the promisc mode to capture raw
> 802.11 frames?
>
> I'd be happy to research stuff, if I can get some pointers on what we need
> to make this driver work for say... Lucent Silver/gold cards.... :)
>
> Kindest Regards,
> Eric Johanson