Individual wireless-to-wired connection?

Any bridge or gaming adapter will do that.

F eks a D-Link DWL-G730AP og Belkin F5D7330. Then turn on your Mac's firewall.

What 3Com card?

Maybe...

A packet filtering solution in a network card. Maybe, you want the card to run NAT and be a DHCP server too.

Duane :)

"bamster" hath wroth:

Actually, I've done better breaking into wired networks. Most LAN's are protected by a firewall. Inside the LAN, security is usually marginal at best. If I can get physical access, then a wired LAN is easier than wireless. Of course, that's the real issue, in that wireless hacking does not require physical access.

The typical wireless router includes a firewall. The problem is that the firewall is between the WAN (internet) port, and the LAN/wireless ports. You can connect the WAN port to your presumeably existing router and end up with a firewall in the path, but it would be backwards and protect your wireless from access from the WAN (or your existing LAN), and not the other way around, which is what I presume you want.

I'm not sure what this firewall would do for you anyway. The real protection in a wireless LAN is in the encryption. A good secure WPA or WPA2 encryption should be sufficient until the next big exploit is released. So far, WPA has not been cracked except for short and stupid keys.

These are called a "wireless switch", which is also sold by Aruba, Symbol, Cisco, Xirrus, Foundry Networks, etc. The idea is to deploy really dumb wireless radios and control everything from a fairly intelligent central switch. This makes corporate WLAN's easy to deploy, expand, and manage. It doesn't buy you anything for a home system. Incidentally, none of these have in internal firewall.

I can't say. I have no idea:

1. What you are trying to accomplish?
2. What you have to work with?

What I guess(tm) you're attempting sounds like it could best be done with a very conventional wireless router (or wireless access point depending on your existing setup), and a game adapter, wireless client bridge, or similar ethernet to wireless device.

On 19 Aug 2006 06:52:00 -0700, "bamster" wrote in :

WPA with a strong passphrase actually provides excellent security. WPA2 even better. Worry more about security over the public Internet. Back them up with VPN and/or SSL/TLC for even more security. Wired too for that matter.

That's probably two devices: wireless client bridge plus hardware firewall. Personally I'd just rely on a personal firewall in the attached computer.

No such animal AFAIK.

Wireless client bridge (e.g., Apple Airport, which I use and recommend)

Check out the WiFlyer at

Thanks to everyone who replied.

Axel: the 3Com card I was referring to is described here:

On 21 Aug 2006 05:50:08 -0700, "bamster" wrote in :

There are wireless routers that can isolate wireless from wired, and even different wireless clients from each other. Such functions are typically found in so-called "hotspot" routers, but can also be implemented in certain low-end routers with third-party firmware. See wikis below for more information.