How to force a connection to go out of machine?

Lennart Sorensen lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org
Fri May 17 17:11:19 UTC 2013


On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 11:53:38AM -0400, James Knott wrote:
> There's a whole lot that goes on between WiFi and the Ethernet
> switch part of those consumer routers.  Regardless, when all is said
> and done, Wifi traffic appears on that switch as though it came in
> via Ethernet.  It's the same thing with stand alone access points,
> as I have here.  It's plain Ethernet traffic, after the WiFi has
> been handled.  Other than apparent bandwidth, there's no way a user
> could tell if they were connected over WiFi or Ethernet, as the WiFi
> function is completely transparent in that regard.  As an
> experiment, ping a device connected via WiFi and then check your arp
> cache.  You will see the MAC address of that device, which means
> it's effectively on the switch or "bridged"¹ to the network.  If it
> passed through the router, you would not see any MAC for it, though
> the router's MAC would be listed.
> 
> 1. A bridge and a switch are logically the same device in that they
> work at the Ethernet level and reduce/eliminate collision domains.

Certainly it is either bridged in linux using brctl in software, or they
are connected in hardware.  Same result, other than the cpu load needed
for software bridging.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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