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Open Source Hotspots
darthcamaro writes "Not that long ago it was a serious pain to get an 802.11b card to work on a Linux machine. [ed note: We love you Jean Tourrilhes!] Wi-Fi Planet has a story where they do an overview of a wad of open source Wi-Fi projects. Did you realize that you don't even need to spend the dough for an Access Point? - standard Linux routing is enough to create your own access point, with a few other tools like Public IP's Zone CD or the Less Networks Hotspot server, you can freely create a hotspot and manage it all in minutes. I guess all this means that both Wi-Fi and open source are literally 'everywhere'."
[ed note: We love you Jean Tourrilhes!]
As you may have known, or guessed from the context, Jean Tourrilhes is involved in all things Linux/Wifi. He has written a great deal of code and documentation on the subject, not to mention research papers.
See more at his page.
NoCat.net????
I love the Albert Einstein quote -lol
Not accusing you of not RTFA, you probably just overlooked this bit by accident;
Guess what? You don't always necessarily need a fixed wireless router device to create your own WLAN. You can do it with two machines that both have Wi-Fi cards, and leave more expensive APs out of the picture.
There are a number of different ways to accomplish this with freely available GNU/Linux based open source software. A typical Linux distribution will generally allow you set up a Linux box as a 'wired' router, so turning it into a wireless router isn't really that big a leap.
Did you realize that you don't even need to spend the dough for an Access Point?
So is this like when you can share the Airport on an Apple without having an actual base station? For example, I can just open up my iBook and create an access point with my airport card (presumably to share the ethernet connection, or dialup, if you dare).
let alone the electricity use and heat that a PC produce compared to an AP. it might not be a lot, but when you consider you will keep the machine running mostly 24/7 it adds up..... unless you live somewhere like Las Vegas where electricity costs virtually nothing.
My $40 Netgear access point is silent and very small and has all the features I want, Id like to see someone put together a linux based wifi router for that sort of money
r t54g
Actually, there are some Linux based AP's for not much more than that. I'm not talking about x86 boxes, with a Wifi card and software to act as an AP. There are cheap hardware AP's that use Linux, and can be extended & modified.
The one I use is the Linksys WRT54G. It's an 802.11G AP, running Linux, and there are several open projects creating firmware updates with nice feature extensions. At the minimum, it allows you to ssh into the box and modify the firewall settings to do exactly what you want.. which is a bit leap over closed AP's.
Some good info on mods for this AP are here: http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/LinksysW
Get anything with a Prism chipset, and you're usually golden. The hostap stuff works with Prism 2/2.5/3, and the prism54 stuff (for g) works with Prism GT. Anything advertising Intersil chipsets are generally Prism. I've had good success with Orinoco stuff, but anyone who licenses Intersil's chipset will work, as I've tried some of the off-brand stuff too with good success.
Prism-based cards are plentiful and cheap, and the drivers, although initially flaky, have really improved over the last couple of months.
Try it, you'll like it. You know you want to.
Sure does! We only have detailed street-level maps of the US, however. Mostly because other countries' governments don't publish this in a free way. The US Census publishes TIGER, but it's in this wacky ass format. Anyone know where to get non-US street data for free?
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Remember...
Most poeple running Linux already have a computer...
What they don't have is a Wi-Fi hotspot...
You can pick up an used Prism 2.5 802.11b card (such as a Dlink DWL-520) for $30 (probably less, before this story hit!). That's it! You've got a wireless access point. Done. No extra hardware to "hide", not more crap to plug in. Just compile in the kernel "hostap" patches, and away you go!
Since you're running a firewall already (you know about Shorewall, right?), it is reasonably easy to set up a firewalled NAT subnet to contain your wireless LAN traffic. Don't bother with silly WEP, use ssh or ipsec for secure access, or just route access from unsecurable Windows boxes directly out to the open internet (use MAC filtering, if you feel vulnerable to losers driving by using your open AP to surf for porn...).
-- -pjk Perry Kundert perry@kundert.ca http://kundert.2y.net
Yah, posting on Slashdot will do that. Takes a while, still handling the load. Certainly a nice test!
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Hyperlinktech has a nice selection of wireless gear, amps, antennas, spliters, etc. They seem like there pricing is high but the quality of the product is good.
Yah, we've been working on a couple of different ways to check that the AP has either moved, changed SSID, or has been taken out of service. The SSID name should have changed if any wardrivers found the unit with the new name, however. Same for WEP charachteristics.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
The only Linux distro I've had any success getting wireless to work under is SuSE, even with the vaunted Prism chipset. Maybe YAST deserves the credit, but I swear I had it setup properly under redhat, debian, and knoppix.
Cheap storage VM.
Actually, not. You'd think that consumers would read the snippets of documentation that come with the box, understand what they're doing when they turn this thing on, and pipe their computers into it. This is not the case. ~70% is unencrypted, and about 30% are totally default. What's the best way to get users to understand this?
I figure, shipping the unit with the factory defaults as nothing working, and make the user read/configure the thing first.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
There are three modes that a wireless device can be in:
So, to build your own access point, you need a card and driver that supports Master mode. Again, this is all AFAIK.
Soekris Engineering produces 486-based routing hardware that will run your choice of Open Source OS. They aren't quite as cheap as a Linksys or Netgear router, but they are hackable and upgradable, since the network interfaces are PCMCIA or Mini-PCI cards and they have Compact Flash interfaces for storage.
I prayed about it, and God said, "Don't do it!" But I thought, "I know better."
Yes, like this: Linux Access Point
IMHO, PersonalTelco rocks.
"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it." Be's Jean-Louis Gass
My understanding is that an access point tells associated devices to transmit one at a time, in an ad-hoc network devices can transmitt over each other.
As far as I'm aware, you can only do host mode with a linux box using hostAP and a prism card. Is there support for any other cards?
I can run a DHCP server on the router to automate the network layer, but there is no way to set the PCI card in the router so that the laptop automagically picks up the channel and establishes a link.
I have the opposite problem, my linux router box in ad-hoc mode somtimes jumps to whatever channel my windows laptop has descided to use, paticularly if the laptop is turned on first. I want it to stay on a fixed channel. The windows laptop has no option to set a channel in ad-hoc mode (orinoco card) and finds the router on any channel.
An access point serves as a bridge between your wired LAN and your wirelessed computers. A router will break that functionality as the network address will change. Useless for business.
Too bad he did not mention the MeshAP project by locustworld.com
you know, if you want to do it for a hobby so you can learn about WiFi, cool. Otherwise, the benefits of "rolling your own" access point on Linux are minimal. Dedicated hardware access points are really a miracle of engineering--they're full-featured yet cheaper than dirt (you can often pick them up for less than $30).
Unless your time is worth *nothing* most people would be better served by simply purchasing a dedicated hardware access point (most are powered by Linux anyhow).