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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'."
Please explain how Linux software and transmit data via a wireless network without any hardware. While that sure would be a neat trick, I'm going to have to file this under the "you dont need to spend 90$ on a wireless acess point! Just spend 300$ on a computer, 50$ on a WAN card and install Linux for FREE!!!" brand of zealotry.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Indeed - with the vast number of open-source projects out there - there is no legitimate reason why any business should have their WiFi at a security risk.
The community is committed to quality - and most importantly, community. (yeah, yeah - play on words). We work together to make the 802.11x standards as bullet-proof and understood as possible.
Did you realize that you don't even need to spend the dough for an Access Point?
Really? Who is giving away mini-itx systems these days then? 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. The whole point of an access point is that its small and discreat enough to be wall mounted, ceiling mounted, crawl space mounted or whatever. Yes this statement may be true if you are looking to reuse old PC hardware, but then you loose much of the point of an AP.
If you're using the same computer both as an access point and a, well, computer (ftp/mail/www/whatever else server), this makes sense. But I would think that reusing old hardware as a dedicated AP would pull 150-200 watts, while a commercial AP would draw less than ten...
What I'd like to see is a standard for logging into a public hotspot which doesn't involve opening a webbrowser and typing something manually.
Wifi hotspots are small and if everyone has his own login system, you'll be too busy logging in to use the net, unless you stop for a while. An increasing number of PDAs come with builtin Wifi. A login standard could make these (almost) always-online, even if you're on the move. This way you could receive mail and instant messages or use location based services.
Remember...
... personally, that falls into the "Just make it work" category for me - there are more interesting things that I can do with my time, even while coding.
Most poeple running Linux already have a computer...
What they don't have is a Wi-Fi hotspot...
Hmm. Yes, but an awful lot of people running Linux have a, singular, computer. And they'd kind of like to use it in different places without running wires everywhere. IE: the normal use of a wireless internet connection.
This is only useful as you point out if they have two computers, one of which they want to leave right where its it. Oh, and they're willing to pay about the same amount of money to get a wireless card as you can pay for a decent WAP. Which is fine, if you get your jollies hacking on your WAP
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
The idea is that the computer that has the wired internet connection gets a wireless NIC added to it, and this NIC is set up as the "wireless" access point for any other wireless NICs in the area.
Kinda like how you may have set up a linux box to be the house router via a wired hub in the past, only now the house side NIC is wireless and you don't need the hub anymore.
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We work together to make the 802.11x standards as bullet-proof and understood as possible.
There is no need to add security to 802.11x. To do so would be a waste of effort, or even counterproductive.
Adequate networking security already exists for the application-layer that runs on top of whatever physical communication mechanism you have. (It has names like SSL, SSH, VPN, and PGP).
If you extend Wifi to be "secure", then people will depend on it, and may ignore other measures that would protect them not only from radio sniffers, but also from eavesdroppers at the ISP or promiscuous PCs on the local ethernet.
I'm not versed in Apple but I suspect you are missing the point. The idea isn't that you can create an ad hoc network, you can do that with just about any wifi cards on any platform. The joy of this is you can set up your linux box to behave just as a wireless router would with more powerful tools. It's the TOOLS that make this fun. Everything you can set up for a linux gateway you can apply to your entire wireless AP without spending the money for a commercial version.
Yes, your generic AP for $40 will let you have SOME of the following features, but I've yet to see one that offers all the tools of a linux gateway.
For example, does your Apple or $40 wireless gateway offer:
- NAT (Probably)
- DHCP (Probably some version of it)
- Firewall software (Some basic version probably)
- Caching and Proxy (as in Squid)
- Packet shaping
- QoS management
- MAC filtering
- SSH tunneling
- VPN
and that's a partial list of what you can control with Linux. I've not seen a cheap gateway that offers ALL of that as customizable as you are willing to make it.
Never confuse volume with power.