>bridge(4) says:
>
>     A bridge can be used to provide several services, such as a simple
>     802.11-to-Ethernet bridge for wireless hosts
>
>while this may be true, i was told that the reason it isn't
>working in practise with wi(4) lucent/orinoco
>gold/silver cards because the firmware does not allow for changing
>MAC addresses on the wireless media.

two points.

(1) i've had no problems with changing the mac on my wi card so that i
can appear to be using, eg, an oui prefix allocated to cray.  just for
fun, mind you.  i don't know, however, if the 802.11 card can transmit
from arbitrary mac addresses.

(2) when placed into promiscuous mode, all the cards i've seen
(barring the older revs of the orinoco cards that had "wavelan"
stickers on them instead) exhibit problems.  the newer orinoco cards
(both silver and gold) appear not to transmit packets, only to receive
them.  the smc card i have seems to ignore inbound arp requests.  i
considered using two cards, one in promiscuous mode, and one not, in
order to make bridging work, but decided against it very quickly.

it's not exactly trivial.

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