Idea: WiFi to GPRS gateway

Joel Newkirk moko at newkirk.us
Thu Dec 28 00:07:41 CET 2006


Gabriel Ambuehl wrote:
> On Wednesday 27 December 2006 18:16, Ole Tange wrote:
>> I actually thought it was more a software/firmware issue. I might be wrong.
>>
> 
> Once you have the two systems talking to each other (for which adhoc would 
> likely be fine if AP mode doesnt work [1]), the software issue becomes 
> actually quite trivial (or I'm missing something).
> 
> You need NAT in the kernel to act as a gateway and possible dnsmasq (or 
> similar) to do DHCP, both of which are very well understood (especially after 
> years of hacking WRT54 and it's brethren) and available for OpenEmbedded.

I've used a Zaurus before as a wifi-to-gprs gateway, when my DSL was
down for a few days.  It is trivial to set up, actually.  (I was using
Zaurus with two different CF wifi cards, Socket and Ambicom, in AP mode
OR client mode with zaurus as default gateway on wireless AP, and using
GPRS over IRDA)  Compile Netfilter modules for the kernel to support
NAT, packet forwarding, firewalling, etc.  (I would hope that even if
not bundled with the unit, every kernel module possible would be built
and available to install)

This should be suitable as well via USB networking... Not useful in the
same situations, perhaps, but nevertheless useful.  Justification for
ensuring that iptable_nat and related modules are made available.

j




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