joining wireless together...

im looking to move into shared accomodation fairly soon where they already have dsl internet connectivity, shared via a wireless router. im going to be using the internet connection that is already there but i dont really want to just connect my pc's to their network, at least not without having some form of firewall (not software on my pc's!) between my network and theirs. they have a mix of wireless and wired clients already in the house.

would it be possible for me to build a *nix router with two wireless nics in it, and one wired nic in it... one wireless nic to connect to the existing wireless router, which would then act as my pseudo-internet connection using nat... and then another wireless nic to serve my wireless network... and then the wired clients will just connect as usual to the standard wired ethernet interface.

would any of the 'standard' *nix routers/firewalls support this configuration, as my linux skills are limited at best!?

thanks!

I would imagine that any of the Linux based firewall/routers will do this as long as the wirleless card is supported.

A couple to check out

Smoothwall
MoNowall
Clarkconnect

I personally use smoothwall and I think that is will allow this.

I have been a Smoothwall user for a couple years now and I love it. However, your idea for a set up is far from standard and will not work with out a lot of modding and reconfiguring. My suggestion would be to run a standards set up then add a Blue interface for a wap. Ask around the Smoothwall boards, the people there are very helpfull.

Im sorry I was reading it backwards I thought he wanted to do kinda like what i have going. Right now I have a Senao 2611 Bridge getting my wireless signal from the water tower in my town, it is then fed into my router via cat 5. this is what i thought he was trying to do. Guess i need to read a bit better next time.

I'm a big pfSense fan, and I'm pretty sure it could do this. You'd just need to configure the first wireless card to be the WAN connection, and then your other wireless and wired as the LAN interfaces. Should be pretty simple and straightforward.

Seems overly complicated to me, I know you said you don't want to use software. But even if you have local ACL's on your comp no one is really going to get in. So I would just get a wireless bridge to catch the signal and set permssions on what you want people to see/not see.

I like what you described above, however I wouldn't worry with the PCI wireless, just go from ethernet into the LAN port of a Buffalo WHR G54S ($39) and disable DHCP/Routing and use the Buffalo as a 4 port switch with wireless AP.