how do you manage wifi cards nowadays?

[madires]

Basically you create a software bridge and add the physical network interfaces. For example for Debian https://wiki.debian.org/BridgeNetworkConnections.

[legacy]

Basically you create a software bridge and add the physical network interfaces. For example for Debian https://wiki.debian.org/BridgeNetworkConnections.

already mentioned, but it doesn't work with recent wireless cards unless you enable a wds interface, but this causes other problems because it's not implemented in the same way everywhere.

[Monkeh]

I use OpenWRT and my routers have no trouble bridging a pair of Atheros9k mini-PCI cards (2.4 and 5 GHz) to my LAN. Maybe they have made some driver changes that haven't been picked up elsewhere? I don't know what OpenWRT does under the hood, but configuration is dead simple and it has worked for me for nearly 7 years.

Bridging AP mode interfaces is not the same as client mode.

Basically you create a software bridge and add the physical network interfaces. For example for Debian https://wiki.debian.org/BridgeNetworkConnections.

already mentioned, but it doesn't work with recent wireless cards unless you enable a wds interface, but this causes other problems because it's not implemented in the same way everywhere.

It doesn't work with any card due to the limited fields in the frame.

[legacy]

It doesn't work with any card due to the limited fields in the frame.

what do you mean? The wds mode on 4addr does works, but it's not guaranteed to be implemented in the same way on two different chip 


anyway, just bought a couple of different wifi cards
- intel2100
- intel2200
- some Broadcom cards
- Atheros5K-AHB (Fon2202, it's 2005-2007 technology)
- Atheros5k (rebranded "Genie"? bah ...)
- Atheros9k <---------- 300MPS, PCI and miniPCI WOWWWW super deal!
- Atheros9k_HC
- Atheros10k


so I will be able to have an idea about the wds combability 

[Monkeh]

It doesn't work with any card due to the limited fields in the frame.

what do you mean? The wds mode on 4addr does works, but it's not guaranteed to be implemented in the same way on two different chip 

I mean bridging a station to an ethernet interface. Without a 4addr frame it does not work. This is not a 'recent' issue, it is just that they only relatively recently prevented people making non-functional bridges, to reduce the amount of noise.

Almost any card with a mac80211 driver will interoperate with any other in 4addr mode, and as an AP with any client. This is a software stack issue with only a small number of chipsets being problematic.