[NCLUG] Software WEP/WPA in Linux gateway?

[Marcio Luis Teixeira]

Hi,

I would like to experiment with a wireless network that supports both trusted and untrusted users. With wireless routers, I know it's pretty much an all or nothing proposition -- either I turn on encryption for everyone or I turn it off for everyone.

What I am wondering is whether I can enable WEP (or WPA) on my clients, leave it off on my wireless router, but have the encrypted packets be decrypted by an upstream gateway running Linux before passing on to my local network. This gateway would also handle unencrypted packets for untrusted users, but would subject them to logging and/or restrictions.

Is this at all possible? I know there are other obvious solutions, such as MAC filtering (transparent, but easily spoofed) or setting up a VPN over an unsecure wireless network (very secure, but not very transparent to my trusted clients). None of these solutions, however, would offer the convenience of having a gateway that can speak plain-text, WEP or WPA depending on the client.

I've googled for this and haven't really turned up anything like this. Any ideas?

-- Marcio



 		
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