Software: Bridging Wired & Wireless in Ubuntu

One thing that Windows XP does exceptionally well, is network bridging. Simply select the network devices you want to bridge, right click and "bridge connections". An absolute dream that has saved me on more than one occasion.

Although I have previously dabbled with networking bridging in Linux, I was a little disappointed that Ubuntu didn't have any graphical way of doing so. To setup a bridge, you have to install the "bridge-utils" package, then at a command line, setup the bridge and add your interfaces using the "brctl" command. Once this is done, the Network manager refuses to accept the bridge as a connection, so if you want to specify your IP addresses, you'll have to do this at the command line too.

I'm not too upset about this, because bridging isn't exactly every day use, so I was expecting to have to get dirty in the console to an extent, but after an hour or so or fiddling, I still couldn't get bridging between wired and wireless devices going.

PC World currently have a Belkin 54Mbit wireless router, with a wireless USB adapter for only £29.99. I set one of these up for my grandparents and was amazed to get 100% signal in all three floors of the house, using my EeePC and the supplied adapter too. Even more impressive is that there is a signal booster setting in the control panel, that I didn't have to use. Either they have an incredibly wireless friendly house (which I doubt) or the Belkin AP is a surprisingly good device.

Wireless has traditionally been a little flaky on Linux, but Ubuntu 7.10 really proved itself to me, supporting quite a few wireless devices out of the box, including my Sony Vaio and the F5D7050 Belkin adapter that was bundled with the AP. As my grandparents didn't need the USB adapter, it found its way into my hands. PC World have these for £19.99 by themselves, which seems very pricey considering an extra tenner will get you an AP too.

However, as I said, after a lot of fiddling, convinced I had done everything right, I came across the following article which suggested:

Linux Foundation

Doing full bridging of wireless (802.11) requires supporting WDS . The current implementation doesn't do it.

It is possible to do limited wireless to Ethernet functionality with some wireless drivers. This requires the device to be able to support a different sender address and source address. That is what WDS provides.

There are ways to make it work, but it is not always straightforward and you probably won't get it right without a pretty solid understanding of 802.11, it's modes, and the frame header format.

Disappointing to say the least, but undoubtedly the reason for my woes. For the moment it seems I'm back to my sub 50% connection.