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I have a computer running Debian Linux attached to a WLAN network and I need to bridge its ethernet interface to in order to provide network functionality to another computer connected to the ethernet port.

I want the computer to be visible to my WLAN network with it's own IP and MAC address. In other words I think that this is called transparent bridge.

While I looked around I found that this can not be implemented but I noticed that this can easily happen when I bridge my VirtualBox interfaces with my WLAN interface.

Is there really no solution to the problem but only VirtualBox has figured it out? Where can I find more info in such networking features for Linux?

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Mini Fridge
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  • well, you are looking at an answer from 2010. Additionally the answer indicates that it is the hardware mode available to the NIC (Station Mode not AP Mode) that is the problem, so entirely unlike the Vbox issue. If you can put your wifi nic into AP mode, you may have a different set of options available. This makes sense, since in STA mode, the upstream AP would only send traffic destined for the debian box, never traffic destined for the clients downstream of the bridge. – Frank Thomas Jan 03 '16 at 01:08
  • You simply cannot have a transparent bridge between 802.3 (ethernet) and 802.11 (Wi-Fi) since the layer-2 frames are incompatible. You _can_, however, have a translating bridge which is what a WAP does. You _must_ translate frames from 802.3 to 802.11 (or 802.4, 802.5, etc.). – Ron Maupin Jan 03 '16 at 02:04
  • @FrankThomas Virtualbox does what I ask transparently for virtual guest network adapters so there must be a way to trick my kernel doing it for physical adapters as well. – Mini Fridge Jan 04 '16 at 11:58
  • @RonMaupin Do you know if there are any software tools for the linux kernel that do the job you describe? I'm new to networking and I am a bit puzzled. – Mini Fridge Jan 04 '16 at 15:20

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