Belkin PF31 Specifications download pdf (Page 38)

Basic Configuration and Operation

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configurations on the master side for each interface, but it leaves the client

devices unable to communicate with each other. The solution to this is called

bridging. Bridging enables multiple network devices to appear as one inter-

face on a network by tying, on the master side, all the bnep* devices into one

interface.

The first step is to ensure that bridging is enabled in your Linux kernel;

bridging is supported in both the 2.4 and 2.6 series of kernels. This option

can be found under “Networking options” from the kernel’s menu configu-

ration and is called 802.1d Ethernet Bridging. You also need the bridge-utils

software package installed. If this is not part of your Linux distribution,

download it from http://bridge.sourceforge.net/.

Once you have the kernel modules and tools installed, you can bring up and

configure a bridge interface:

# brctl addbr pan0

# ifconfig pan0 192.168.7.1

# brctl setfd pan0 0

# brctl stp pan0 disable

This bridged interface then handles all the BNEP interfaces. The latter two

commands disable two features of Ethernet bridging known as Listening and

Learning States and Spanning Tree Protocol. For noncomplex networks, they

are not required and may cause delays to initializing the network. Further

information on these features can be found on the O’Reilly Network web site

at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2001/03/30/net_2nd_lang.html.

The second part of the trick is to get pand to add each interface to the bridge

as it comes up. Create a script, as shown in Example 7-8, and save it to /etc/

bluetooth/pan/dev-up. Ensure it is executable.

The bridging method provides another advantage: you don’t need to inform

your DHCP server of the existence of a new interface whenever a BNEP con-

nection is made.

Here is the configuration of the network interfaces after a bridged network

connection has been established with one NAP and two PANU clients:

bnep0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:40:05:D0:DD:69

inet6 addr: fe80::240:5ff:fed0:dd69/64 Scope:Link

UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:11 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:13 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

Example 7-8. A script to add each BNEP network interface to the bridge

#!/bin/sh

brctl addif pan0 $1

ifconfig $1 0.0.0.0

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Belkin PF31 Specifications Page 38