Theo,
Yes, your Linux box can do the routing/masquerading/etc. of an
access point. I am doing it with some older 2MB wireless cards and it
works fine. Setup the cards in adhoc/infrastructure mode (peer to
peer).
Jeffrey
Quoting Theo. Sean Schulze
Thanks for the suggestion. Recently I have been looking at the AmbiCom Wave2Net products, specifically their WL1100B PC Card and PCI adapters, but I have to confess that I have been shopping more by price than anything else. Still AmbiCom advertises their cards as Linux supported, and their web site provides installation instructions and source for a driver.
What I am wondering is whether I need an access point at all. I was thinking I could stick an 802.11b-compliant card in a PCI slot on my linux box and then use that as my access point. It is already running SuSEFirewall2 to protect my home network, and masquerading itself and my other machines. The laptop would then get a wireless PC card instead of its LAN PC card, and with a little tinkering, I could be surfing the 'Net while watching "Tatort" in my living room. Add an ADSL connection (probably Deutsche Telekom's T-DSL) to the linux box, and life would be good. :-) (Configuration of two NICs and a wireless PCI card in one machine is likely to be a challenge, though.)
-- I don't do Windows and I don't come to work before nine. -- Johnny Paycheck