SMR Peer to Peer Networking

SMR configuration

Please note that not all the pcmcia cards are good at peer-to-peer. The Lucent WaveLAN Silver (MAC manufacturer/product code: 00:60:1d) works fine in Infrastructure mode, but does not work at all in peer-to-peer. This is tested with both a PC/104 pcmcia adapter and a PCI adapter on the card 00:60:1d:f1:b5:b7. The Avaya and Lucent Orinoco cards (MAC manufacturer: 00:02:2d) works fine in both modes. This might spare someone for a few hours of head scratching. The PCI cards with antennas do not necessarily work the same way as these, but I have not tested them. /NHA

With Slackware Linux, two configuration files must be modified in order for an SMR to communicate peer-to-peer with other hosts. Edit the files using e.g. 'jed'

/etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts

In the section for the SMR wireless card (e.g. Wavelan IEEE Lucent), change the two variables ESSID and MODE to the values below:

ESSID="SMR Network"
MODE="Ad-Hoc"

/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf

In the section for the wireless device (e.g. eth0), change USE_DHCP to "no", and set static IP network settings:

# Config information for eth0:
IPADDR[0]="10.0.1.xxx"
NETMASK[0]="255.0.0.0"
USE_DHCP[0]="no"
GATEWAY="10.0.1.xxx"

Replace xxx with 100 plus the number from the SMR hostname: smr4 would be 10.0.1.104, for example. Make sure that the above keywords appear once only - e.g. There may be a GATEWAY="" at the end.

Reboot smr to implement requires restart of pcmcia and ethernet, so from a ssh session it may be easier just to reboot (but will clear the ram-disk):

$ reboot

The alternative is to use a local console and the commands (this will preserve what is on the ram-disk):

$ /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia restart
$ /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 restart

To verify the new interface use the command

$ ifconfig

This should show the correct IP number etc. for interface eth0.

MS Windows configuration

Corresponding changes must be made in Windows.

  1. Set the wireless network adaptor to ad-hoc mode with ESSID "SMR Network".
  1. Set TCP/IP properties to static IP, 10.0.1.1/255.0.0.0.