On 28.07.25 15:24, Bjoern A. Zeeb wrote:
On Mon, 28 Jul 2025, Jan Bramkamp wrote:
On 13.07.25 02:58, Ben Hutton wrote:
Hi,
Is it possible to use a wlan device with a bridge and tap device for
use with bhyve? When I've tried this I cannot seem to get traffic to
route past the bridge.
Not really. A normal Ethernet frame has two MAC addresses (source and
destination).
WiFi adds a third MAC address to each frame (source, destination and
access point) with the client MAC address authenticated to the access
point.
What you want would require a fourth MAC address (source,
destination, access point, client) to separate the client
authentication from source/destination MAC address (depending on
direction).
Such a frame format exists and is used by WiFi repeaters, but it's
not commonly supported by FreeBSD WiFi drivers or access points.
My aim is to get bhyve working with network access on my laptop on
WiFi. So far I have had to use Ethernet connections.
All reasonably sane bhyve guest connections look like Ethernet to the
bhyve guest.
I have looked into NAT but am unsure how I would do this with bhyve?
You would:
* configure the host as a router
* create a bridge (with a static MAC address if you want to)
* not add any physical interfaces to the bridge
What is that bridge for if you are routing anyway?
You are forwarding packets and are doing { wlan | NAT } - forward - tap.
tap interfaces can have IP addresses.
Without the bridge more host configuration per bhyve guest is needed.
The bridge is a single interface that can handle multiple guests and it
isolates the routed interface from the link state changes if guest
start/stop.
If you want to reduce the overhead and provide better isolation between
guests I would recommend using the tap driver under the vmnet name
because it sets the needed interface flag to not bring down the
interface when the guest closes the tap device because that removes the
route(s).
