# wlan access point (bridged) with FreeBSD 8?



## tingo (Dec 19, 2009)

Is there a howto that explains setting up a bridged wireless access point using FreeBSD 8?

The only bridged howtos I found were for FreeBSD 4 and 5.
Note; yes, I want a proper access point, therefore bridged. Not a router using NAT and whatnot.


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## mickey (Dec 19, 2009)

tingo said:
			
		

> Note; yes, I want a proper access point, therefore bridged. Not a router using NAT and whatnot.



Why would you use NAT to route traffic from one internal network to another?


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## tingo (Dec 20, 2009)

mickey said:
			
		

> Why would you use NAT to route traffic from one internal network to another?



I would not  However, the highest ranking "FreeBSD wireless access point" articles in Google results were in fact for a nat router setup with wireless. Which is NOT what I want. So I found it best to make that clear in my post here.


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## mickey (Dec 20, 2009)

tingo said:
			
		

> I would not  However, the highest ranking "FreeBSD wireless access point" articles in Google results were in fact for a nat router setup with wireless. Which is NOT what I want. So I found it best to make that clear in my post here.



And I guess none of these articles instructs you to perform NAT when routing traffic between your WLAN and your LAN 

So letting aside NAT, let me reformulate my question: Why do you want to bridge traffic between your WLAN and your LAN instead of routing it?

Is it the _routing_ part that bothers you, or the _NAT_ part?


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## malexe (Dec 20, 2009)

http://www.howtoforge.com/setting_up_a_freebsd_wlan_access_point

Just use the parts that are refering to make the access point, you know you can just ignore what you want to use. You don't have to 100% follow how-to


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## tingo (Dec 20, 2009)

malexe said:
			
		

> http://www.howtoforge.com/setting_up_a_freebsd_wlan_access_point
> 
> Just use the parts that are refering to make the access point, you know you can just ignore what you want to use. You don't have to 100% follow how-to



Sure, I can ignore the parts I don't need. However, that howto doesn't say anything about bridging. Not useful.


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## SirDice (Dec 20, 2009)

Last I heard bridging a wireless nic is somewhat problematic. But you can always use 2 network segments and route between them.


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## tingo (Dec 20, 2009)

SirDice said:
			
		

> Last I heard bridging a wireless nic is somewhat problematic.


Interesting. Links to more information?



> But you can always use 2 network segments and route between them.



As I have said earlier: I do not want to use routing in this case.
I just want an extra wireless access point for my network. If possible, using FreeBSD. If not, I'll find another way.


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## ondra_knezour (Dec 20, 2009)

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=8870 may be interesting, although probably not suitable directly for 8.0 (ifconfig_ath0 in rc.conf doesn't take into account creation of VAP on wireless HW etc.).


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## bschmidt (Dec 20, 2009)

`# man 4 if_bridge`

It tells you exactly what to do to create an accesspoint with a bridge. Just copy the example.


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