Using Debian as an Access Point?

[Bruce Park]

Hey guys,

Is there anyway to use Debian as an access point?

bp

[Nate Duehr]

Post by Bruce Park
Hey guys,
Is there anyway to use Debian as an access point?

I assume you mean wireless access point and 802.11b is the goal.

If you get cards (usually Prism chipset) that support HostAP, then yes.

It's pretty much a roll-your-own kind of thing. Haven't seen any
Debian-specific packages for creating an AP or making it "easy" yet,
really. Of course, I'm not looking either... AP's are so cheap it's not
worth the effort unless the application is very specialized. The
PCI-based 802.11b Prism chipset cards cost roughly twice what a
discounted real AP would cost from an online vendor.

Nate

[Joey Hess]

Post by Nate Duehr
If you get cards (usually Prism chipset) that support HostAP, then yes.
It's pretty much a roll-your-own kind of thing. Haven't seen any
Debian-specific packages for creating an AP or making it "easy" yet,
really. Of course, I'm not looking either... AP's are so cheap it's not
worth the effort unless the application is very specialized. The
PCI-based 802.11b Prism chipset cards cost roughly twice what a
discounted real AP would cost from an online vendor.

The nice thing about my linux based AP is that, unlike every proprietary
AP I've used, it doesn't randomly lose settings, crash, require some
crummy web interface, contain stupid backdoor security problems, etc. My
AP also mails me when it sees new clients, has powerful packet filtering
and andwidth throttling capailities, and can be upgraded with apt-get.

Since I have a home server anyway, slapping a pcmcia card in it is well
worth the extra $20. The dedicated APs are somewhat useful if you're
traveling or setting up a temporary network where reliability and
long-tem security and maintainabily is not an issue.

[Nate Duehr]

Post by Joey Hess

Post by Nate Duehr
If you get cards (usually Prism chipset) that support HostAP, then yes.
It's pretty much a roll-your-own kind of thing. Haven't seen any
Debian-specific packages for creating an AP or making it "easy" yet,
really. Of course, I'm not looking either... AP's are so cheap it's not
worth the effort unless the application is very specialized. The
PCI-based 802.11b Prism chipset cards cost roughly twice what a
discounted real AP would cost from an online vendor.

The nice thing about my linux based AP is that, unlike every proprietary
AP I've used, it doesn't randomly lose settings, crash, require some
crummy web interface, contain stupid backdoor security problems, etc. My
AP also mails me when it sees new clients, has powerful packet filtering
and andwidth throttling capailities, and can be upgraded with apt-get.

Hmm, I wonder if you've been using the combined AP/Router things. My
three standard AP's (no routing capabilities and NO intelligence
on-board - Linksys WAP-11's) have worked fine for years... I have a
version 1, 1.2, and 2. Agreed that the AP/Router things are a giant
pain. The only one I'd consider is the new Linksys one that runs Linux
under the hood and lots of people have alternate flash images for.
(That one looks fun.)

Post by Joey Hess
Since I have a home server anyway, slapping a pcmcia card in it is well
worth the extra $20. The dedicated APs are somewhat useful if you're
traveling or setting up a temporary network where reliability and
long-tem security and maintainabily is not an issue.

The problem I have with doing it in a server (I did this for a while) is
that a server failure of any kind also kills all the wireless clients.
I probably need the wireless clients to research what's wrong with the
server. It's kinda a "I don't want all the eggs in one basket" kind of
thing.

Some of your other features could easily be replicated by things like
arpwatch on the internal network and other similar things. Do the
throttling upstream somewhere, that sort of thing.

Nate

[Olle Eriksson]

Post by Nate Duehr

Post by Joey Hess

Post by Nate Duehr
It's pretty much a roll-your-own kind of thing. Haven't seen any
Debian-specific packages for creating an AP or making it "easy" yet,
really. Of course, I'm not looking either... AP's are so cheap it's
not worth the effort unless the application is very specialized.
The PCI-based 802.11b Prism chipset cards cost roughly twice what a
discounted real AP would cost from an online vendor.

The nice thing about my linux based AP is that, unlike every
proprietary AP I've used, it doesn't randomly lose settings, crash,
require some crummy web interface, contain stupid backdoor security
problems, etc. My AP also mails me when it sees new clients, has
powerful packet filtering and andwidth throttling capailities, and
can be upgraded with apt-get.

Hmm, I wonder if you've been using the combined AP/Router things. My
three standard AP's (no routing capabilities and NO intelligence
on-board - Linksys WAP-11's) have worked fine for years... I have a
version 1, 1.2, and 2. Agreed that the AP/Router things are a giant
pain. The only one I'd consider is the new Linksys one that runs Linux
under the hood and lots of people have alternate flash images for.
(That one looks fun.)

What exactly is the problem with the wireless routers? I was just about to
buy one and would like to know more about you experiences. Loose
settings, crash? That doesn't sound good. I was hoping to make it easier
for myself by having all that stuff separated from my linux machine.
Should I not?

Best regards
Olle Eriksson

[Frederik Dannemare]

Post by Olle Eriksson

Post by Nate Duehr

Post by Joey Hess

Post by Nate Duehr
It's pretty much a roll-your-own kind of thing. Haven't seen any
Debian-specific packages for creating an AP or making it "easy"
yet, really. Of course, I'm not looking either... AP's are so
cheap it's not worth the effort unless the application is very
specialized. The PCI-based 802.11b Prism chipset cards cost
roughly twice what a discounted real AP would cost from an
online vendor.

The nice thing about my linux based AP is that, unlike every
proprietary AP I've used, it doesn't randomly lose settings,
crash, require some crummy web interface, contain stupid backdoor
security problems, etc. My AP also mails me when it sees new
clients, has powerful packet filtering and andwidth throttling
capailities, and can be upgraded with apt-get.

Hmm, I wonder if you've been using the combined AP/Router things.
My three standard AP's (no routing capabilities and NO intelligence
on-board - Linksys WAP-11's) have worked fine for years... I have a
version 1, 1.2, and 2. Agreed that the AP/Router things are a
giant pain. The only one I'd consider is the new Linksys one that
runs Linux under the hood and lots of people have alternate flash
images for. (That one looks fun.)

What exactly is the problem with the wireless routers? I was just
about to buy one and would like to know more about you experiences.
Loose settings, crash? That doesn't sound good. I was hoping to make
it easier for myself by having all that stuff separated from my linux
machine. Should I not?

My experience it this: Bought an Zyxel ZyAIR B-2000v2 last year around
this time. It was awful (maybe I was just unlucky and got a bad unit.
dunno). It would crash in no time when I tried forcing the external NIC
to run at a particular speed and duplex (the ZyAIR would not
auto-negotiate with the cable modem I had at that time).

Also, it would lose its configuration over and over again and return to
default/factory values. Returned it to the shop after 2 days doing
nothing but trying to get it behave properly. Since then I have been
using a small Linux machine as wireless AP, and this just makes it so
much easier to really be in control of your AP.

[Nate Duehr]

Post by Olle Eriksson
What exactly is the problem with the wireless routers? I was just about to
buy one and would like to know more about you experiences. Loose
settings, crash? That doesn't sound good. I was hoping to make it easier
for myself by having all that stuff separated from my linux machine.
Should I not?

Early Linksys devices had massive UDP packet loss. Later firmware
updates seem to have fixed it.

As one example...

Nate

[Marcel Weber]

Post by Olle Eriksson
What exactly is the problem with the wireless routers? I was just about to
buy one and would like to know more about you experiences. Loose
settings, crash? That doesn't sound good. I was hoping to make it easier
for myself by having all that stuff separated from my linux machine.
Should I not?

Well most consumer access points are crap: I tried the following devices:

- D-Link DWL 614+ (revision A with two antennas) Bad Wireless range.
Router part was more or less okay but not very performant.

- SMC 2804WBR: Crashed all the time. Lost it's settings. Hang after 36
hours uptime. A real nightmare.

- Zyxel G-2000: Quite stable. Hangs once or twice a month. Router part
has problems with to many connections (especially p2p). Newer firmware
is buggy and unstable.

I for my part would recommend a decent access point WITHOUT any routing
functions and a seperate router (best would be a linux box).
Alternatively, for the adventerious building a dedicated Linux WLAN box.
You could take a mini-ITX-system like the Via EPIA CL6000E. Passively
cooled, featuring a PCMCIA card slot for a WLAN card and with a moderate
power consumption would it make a good choice. Of course, such a system
would still be bigger and more expensive than a WLAN router from the
shelf. Of course if it is just the size that matters, you could buy a
industry biscuit PC. With these you can even get rid of the PC power
supplies.

There is a linux based wireless router from linksys, but I don't have
any experiences with it. But I would expect that the community can
improve the software.

Don't think that problems of $50 to $100 consumer devices will ever get
fixed. There IS a reason why "professional" access points are still
selling at $1000. So do a longer google research for seeing if other
users are having the problems with a specific model before buying it. Be
aware, that most vendors sell different hardware under the same name.
There exist at least two DWL 614+ models which differ completely.

Just my 2 cents

Regards

Marcel

[Alvin Oga]

Post by Marcel Weber
I for my part would recommend a decent access point WITHOUT any routing
functions and a seperate router (best would be a linux box).
Alternatively, for the adventerious building a dedicated Linux WLAN box.
You could take a mini-ITX-system like the Via EPIA CL6000E. Passively

or use a wrap/soekris style motherboards w/ +12v wall adaptor
and run your own iptables on it running in compact flash or
in /dev/ram ( /dev/loop )

Post by Marcel Weber
cooled, featuring a PCMCIA card slot for a WLAN card and with a moderate
power consumption would it make a good choice. Of course, such a system
would still be bigger and more expensive than a WLAN router from the
shelf. Of course if it is just the size that matters, you could buy a
industry biscuit PC. With these you can even get rid of the PC power
supplies.

what's a "biscuit pc" .. googled it ... yuck ...
but the nova link looks good but expensive sbc ??
( same (geode) cpu as wrap/soekris )

or maybe a even a gumstix pc
http://gumstix.com/

c ya
alvin

[Robert Vangel]

We are using the Linksys WRT54G at home, but with a different firmware
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/wifi-box/) and haven't had any problems
with it.

It's been up around 2 months now (last reboot was the firmware upgrade)
and everything is good. Clients range from ~50m to about 2k's away, with
2k's away (not exactly sure of equipment) get around 40Mb/s.

Post by Marcel Weber

Post by Olle Eriksson
What exactly is the problem with the wireless routers? I was just
about to buy one and would like to know more about you experiences.
Loose settings, crash? That doesn't sound good. I was hoping to make
it easier for myself by having all that stuff separated from my linux
machine. Should I not?

- D-Link DWL 614+ (revision A with two antennas) Bad Wireless range.
Router part was more or less okay but not very performant.
- SMC 2804WBR: Crashed all the time. Lost it's settings. Hang after 36
hours uptime. A real nightmare.
- Zyxel G-2000: Quite stable. Hangs once or twice a month. Router part
has problems with to many connections (especially p2p). Newer firmware
is buggy and unstable.
I for my part would recommend a decent access point WITHOUT any routing
functions and a seperate router (best would be a linux box).
Alternatively, for the adventerious building a dedicated Linux WLAN box.
You could take a mini-ITX-system like the Via EPIA CL6000E. Passively
cooled, featuring a PCMCIA card slot for a WLAN card and with a moderate
power consumption would it make a good choice. Of course, such a system
would still be bigger and more expensive than a WLAN router from the
shelf. Of course if it is just the size that matters, you could buy a
industry biscuit PC. With these you can even get rid of the PC power
supplies.
There is a linux based wireless router from linksys, but I don't have
any experiences with it. But I would expect that the community can
improve the software.
Don't think that problems of $50 to $100 consumer devices will ever get
fixed. There IS a reason why "professional" access points are still
selling at $1000. So do a longer google research for seeing if other
users are having the problems with a specific model before buying it. Be
aware, that most vendors sell different hardware under the same name.
There exist at least two DWL 614+ models which differ completely.
Just my 2 cents
Regards
Marcel

[Nate Duehr]

[snipped]

Agreed.

Post by Marcel Weber
I for my part would recommend a decent access point WITHOUT any routing
functions and a seperate router (best would be a linux box).

Overkill. Linksys WAP11 or similar. No routing, not brain dead. Can
support WPA and wpa_supplicant can do the client side on Linux. Cheap,
nothing to maintain (other than maybe the once-in-a-while firmware
update for really odd-ball problems, rare anymore...), simple. Done.

Post by Marcel Weber
There is a linux based wireless router from linksys, but I don't have
any experiences with it. But I would expect that the community can
improve the software.

Already done. Google. Numerous community and commercial options for
that thing. Built-in VPN servers, better firewall, stuff like that.

Nate

[Kevin Mark]

Post by Nate Duehr

Post by Bruce Park
Hey guys,
Is there anyway to use Debian as an access point?

I assume you mean wireless access point and 802.11b is the goal.
If you get cards (usually Prism chipset) that support HostAP, then yes.
It's pretty much a roll-your-own kind of thing. Haven't seen any
Debian-specific packages for creating an AP or making it "easy" yet,
really. Of course, I'm not looking either... AP's are so cheap it's not
worth the effort unless the application is very specialized. The
PCI-based 802.11b Prism chipset cards cost roughly twice what a
discounted real AP would cost from an online vendor.
Nate

Hi Nate, etc.
one of the fellows at a local lug (nycwireless.net) made pebble linux
for making AP with debian.
check it out.
-Kev
--
counter.li.org #238656 -- goto counter.li.org and be counted!

(__)
(oo)
/------\/
/ | ||
* /\---/\
~~ ~~
...."Have you mooed today?"...

[Jochen Schulz]

Post by Bruce Park
Is there anyway to use Debian as an access point?

Sure. Get a PCI card (e.g. SMC 2802W, usable with prism54) and put it
into master mode (iwconfig ethX mode master). You're done. Of course
you can also do some filtering with iptables and install a DNS and DHCP
server (->dnsmasq).

J.

[Alvin Oga]

Post by Bruce Park
Is there anyway to use Debian as an access point?

- pick a wifi card that supports "Master" mode

if you have to use ndiswrapper, it will NOT work as an AP

- than worry about 64bit or 128bit WEP
- than worry about wpa .. and which variations of WPA

- both ends have to be compatible to talk to each other
eg.. sometimes netgear will not talk to dlink
and/or with the competitors products

- if you make the ap .. you have to find which
wifi clients you can support

AP howto
http://www.linux-wireless.org/AP/

c ya
alvin

[Frederik Dannemare]

Post by Bruce Park
Hey guys,
Is there anyway to use Debian as an access point?

Yes, it's certainly possible. Get a card which supports the hostap
driver. I have some notes which you may be able to use.
<http://www.sentinel.dk/cookbook/?Wireless_cards_%2F_access_points>

Don't mind the first half of the recipe where I absolutely feel like
using the hostap driver for the non-AP nodes. Today I simply use the
orinoco driver for new nodes since this works out-of-the-box with the
Sarge installer, anyway.

Best regards,

[Bruce Park]

What kind of encryption (WEP, WPA) will it be able to do?

Would the card control this?

bp

Post by Frederik Dannemare

Post by Bruce Park
Hey guys,
Is there anyway to use Debian as an access point?

Yes, it's certainly possible. Get a card which supports the hostap
driver. I have some notes which you may be able to use.
<http://www.sentinel.dk/cookbook/?Wireless_cards_%2F_access_points>
Don't mind the first half of the recipe where I absolutely feel like
using the hostap driver for the non-AP nodes. Today I simply use the
orinoco driver for new nodes since this works out-of-the-box with the
Sarge installer, anyway.
Best regards,
--
http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=Frederik+Dannemare
http://frederik.dannemare.net | http://www.linuxworlddomination.dk
--

[Bruce Park]

Post by Frederik Dannemare

Post by Bruce Park
Hey guys,
Is there anyway to use Debian as an access point?

Yes, it's certainly possible. Get a card which supports the hostap
driver. I have some notes which you may be able to use.
<http://www.sentinel.dk/cookbook/?Wireless_cards_%2F_access_points>
Don't mind the first half of the recipe where I absolutely feel like
using the hostap driver for the non-AP nodes. Today I simply use the
orinoco driver for new nodes since this works out-of-the-box with the
Sarge installer, anyway.
Best regards,
--

I would like to use my router (Linux machine) to act as an AP. It looks
like this can be done according to the link above.

Now, can anyone recommend a card that will work in Linux?

Furthermore, the link only shows WEP encryption. I want to be able to do
WPA. Is this possible using a Debian machine?

bp

Post by Frederik Dannemare
http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=Frederik+Dannemare
http://frederik.dannemare.net | http://www.linuxworlddomination.dk
--

[Frederik Dannemare]

Post by Bruce Park

Post by Frederik Dannemare

Post by Bruce Park
Hey guys,
Is there anyway to use Debian as an access point?

Yes, it's certainly possible. Get a card which supports the hostap
driver. I have some notes which you may be able to use.
<http://www.sentinel.dk/cookbook/?Wireless_cards_%2F_access_points>
Don't mind the first half of the recipe where I absolutely feel
like using the hostap driver for the non-AP nodes. Today I simply
use the orinoco driver for new nodes since this works
out-of-the-box with the Sarge installer, anyway.
Best regards,
--

I would like to use my router (Linux machine) to act as an AP. It
looks like this can be done according to the link above.
Now, can anyone recommend a card that will work in Linux?

I'm using a Netgear MA311 802.11b wireless adapter as AP.

Post by Bruce Park
Furthermore, the link only shows WEP encryption. I want to be able to
do WPA. Is this possible using a Debian machine?

Don't know about WPA, but you should probably use some sort of VPN
solution for your WLAN, anyways. I use OpenVPN for various reasons.

[Alvin Oga]

Post by Bruce Park
Now, can anyone recommend a card that will work in Linux?

...

Post by Bruce Park
Furthermore, the link only shows WEP encryption. I want to be able to
do WPA. Is this possible using a Debian machine?

see the list of supported hardware for each driver

hostap and madwifi is the only 2 drivers that supports WPA

http://Linux-Wireless.org/AP/#WPA
http://Linux-Wireless.org/WPA/

c ya
alvin

[Frederik Dannemare]

Post by Alvin Oga

Post by Bruce Park
Now, can anyone recommend a card that will work in Linux?

...

Post by Bruce Park
Furthermore, the link only shows WEP encryption. I want to be
able to do WPA. Is this possible using a Debian machine?

see the list of supported hardware for each driver
hostap and madwifi is the only 2 drivers that supports WPA
http://Linux-Wireless.org/AP/#WPA
http://Linux-Wireless.org/WPA/
c ya
alvin

Well, that was a rather odd quoting/reply style, methinks.

[Frederik Dannemare]

Post by Frederik Dannemare

Post by Bruce Park

Post by Frederik Dannemare

Post by Bruce Park
Hey guys,
Is there anyway to use Debian as an access point?

Yes, it's certainly possible. Get a card which supports the
hostap driver. I have some notes which you may be able to use.
<http://www.sentinel.dk/cookbook/?Wireless_cards_%2F_access_point
s>
Don't mind the first half of the recipe where I absolutely feel
like using the hostap driver for the non-AP nodes. Today I simply
use the orinoco driver for new nodes since this works
out-of-the-box with the Sarge installer, anyway.
Best regards,
--

I would like to use my router (Linux machine) to act as an AP. It
looks like this can be done according to the link above.
Now, can anyone recommend a card that will work in Linux?

I'm using a Netgear MA311 802.11b wireless adapter as AP.

Post by Bruce Park
Furthermore, the link only shows WEP encryption. I want to be able
to do WPA. Is this possible using a Debian machine?

Don't know about WPA, but you should probably use some sort of VPN
solution for your WLAN, anyways. I use OpenVPN for various reasons.

Why a VPN solution? I was thinking of making the entire machine a VPN
endpoint once I have the time to sort out machine.

WEP/WPA is too easy to break. Lots of info out there about the problems
with it. On the other hand, if you cycle keys often and traffic volume
on your wlan is low, you are probably safe. For example I tried
aircrack against my wlan some time ago, but "gave up" after 10 days or
so. Not enough traffic to analyze.

Please remember to CC the list.