Re: Project Evil APs

On Sunday 30 May 2004 20:06, Bill Paul wrote:
> > > <jedi mind trick>
> > > You want to use ad-hoc mode. You don't want to bother me with
> > > silly questions about hostap mode because it doesn't really let
> > > you do anything you can't do with ad-hoc mode anyway. Use IPSec
> > > with ad-hoc mode and you'll probably get better security than any
> > > access point can give you in the first place.
> > > </jedi mind trick>
> >
> > Probably. Only if I can get this silly little WinME laptop to do
> > ad-hoc as well though. The main reason for doing this is that my AP
> > died and my gf wants to use the laptop in the garden :-).
>
> Did you... read the little booklet that came with the card in your
> gf's computer? Sometimes there's a special control panel snap-in or
> custom utility to configure the card. If not, go to the control
> panel, click "system" and look for the device manager. Select the
> wireless device and check for driver settings. You might be able to
> set ad-hoc mode there.

I managed to find new drivers for the laptop's card and it works fine 
now. Now I just have to put some kind of tunnelling thing together (I 
guess pptp is the only option for WinMe) so that the neighbours can't 
'borrow' our service.

>
> > Interestingly, the inf file lists a registry key named
> > "EnableSoftAP" which appears to suggest that support might be
> > possible in windows with the right software. Probably involves
> > custom drivers using private interfaces with the driver though :-(.
> >
> > Any chance of a native driver for the Broadcom 43xx stuff?
>
> Broadcom refuses to release programming manuals for their wireless
> chipsets, most likely because they use software controlled radios.
> In order to get FCC type acceptance for their parts, they have to
> fix it so the user can't arbitrarily set things like operating
> frequencies, modulation parameters and power output. Since a large
> part of that is now controlled by the driver (rather than by
> firmware, like with the Lucent WaveLAN and Aironet devices), the only
> way they can do that is by making the driver binary only. If they
> gave out driver source or manuals, you could figure out how to
> reprogram the radio any way you wanted, which would make the FCC
> unhappy, which means no FCC type acceptance, which means no sales in
> the U.S. market.
>
> Note that the Intel Centrino wireless chips (Calexico I and Calexico
> II) are firmware driven, which is what makes it possible to have a
> native driver for them without violating FCC regs. To bad Intel wrote
> the book on foot dragging.

I understand the problem here and believe me, I'm happy to be able to 
use the card at all with the windows drivers. Obviously it would be 
wonderful to have some kind of split public/private driver like the 
ath_hal model but I don't really expect Broadcom to care enough about 
our tiny market to do that.