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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.
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).
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.
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
Seriously, nocat is a great piece of work. I had the opportunity to test nocat with some SMC WAPs recently and I was impressed. The setup was a little difficult (had trouble getting the latest stable to work, nightly opporated fine however), but once it was up and running I had no trouble accomplishing exactly what I wanted.
The company I was working for was trying to install wifi access in downtown Macon GA. We got beat to the punch by Cox Communications (who has a many time inferiour setup, but I won't go into that). NoCat basically lets you firewall off all ip traffic until a user opens their web browser. Upon doing that, their session is captured by nocat and redirected to an https page where they have the option of signing in, or using the system anonymously.
The benefits of this are incredible. Coffee shops can use it to broadcast out a TOS that one must agree to before using their wifi, large scale networks can offer web page advertising that everyone must go through sooner or later, and universites can require students to sign in to use the free service. It's a great way to offer 'contractual' service to users without having to distribute wifi keys everywhere.
Slackware, what else when it must be secure, stable, and easy?
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
Too bad he did not mention the MeshAP project by locustworld.com