Switching from wired to wireless getting "network down"

[J. Porter Clark]

On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 09:46:26AM -0700, Sam Leffler wrote:
> 
> Andrew Thompson wrote:
> > On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 09:35:46AM -0700, Sam Leffler wrote:
> >   
> >> J. Porter Clark wrote:
> >>>>         
> >>> I've been playing around with this sort of setup, too, where I
> >>> want a command line to change from wired to wireless (at the
> >>> same IP address, even) and back again.  I haven't found the
> >>> magic solution, particularly one that doesn't have a lot of
> >>> hardcoded network config in it.  I'm also somewhat ticked that
> >>> "route flush" doesn't really flush all routes like the man page
> >>> says.  8-) Eventually, I usually arrive at a point where I can't
> >>> find my way back and have to reboot to get some work done.
> >>>
> >>> Some things I've been using are "route delete <my ip address>"
> >>> and "route add -ifp <interface> default".  Might be a good idea
> >>> to "arp -a -d", too.
> >>>       
> >> If this is 7.x or later, have you tried using lagg(4) to do automatic 
> >> failover?  The man page says wpa doesn't work but after talking to Andrew 
> >> we think that's no longer true.  I haven't had a chance to try it myself.
> >
> > This is becuase lagg(4) will set the interface down/up when grabbing it
> > and wpa_supplicant does not get restarted. This may work now but looking
> > through /etc/devd.conf I dont see a rule to handle it (only ATTACH and
> > LINK_UP events). A new devd event may need to be added to handle this
> > situation. Patches welcome.
> 
> I believe LINK_UP should be sufficient but we need to check.

FreeBSD-STABLE (says 7.2-PRERELEASE at the moment).

I haven't tried lagg(4), because I didn't know it existed, but I
will look into it--it sounds like just what I need, if it works!

In fact, I am only doing WEP on this network.  The laptop that
I'm using is an employer-issued Dell Latitude E6500, which has
the dreaded Intel 5100AGN among its faults.  To get wireless
working, I'm ignoring that and using an old Agere Orinoco Gold
card (wi), which AFAIK doesn't know how to do WPA--I could be
wrong.  The reason I'm having to switch between it and the wired
interface is that I can get no better than about 3 Mbps through
the wireless card, and I actually have 10 Mbps downlink service
here.  So I do wired when I need performance and wireless when I
need mobility, at least until support for the 5100 arrives.

-- 
J. Porter Clark      <jpc at porterclark.com>