Comments on: Ubuntu Gateway / Access Point Server

By: admin

admin — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 02:54:15 +0000

Robert, in a terminal try: sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

By: robert

robert — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 01:12:12 +0000

hey guys ive been trying out this guide since im new to linux (im so in love with it) and i could run my msi wireless card as an AP on Windows.. so thats pretty much the only thing i still cant get to work on my new machine with ubuntu =(

Here’s what’s giving me trouble:

1.- I cant install the madwifi drivers and typing sudo apt-get install madwifi-tools returns “cant find package madwifi-tools”. So i just downloaded the newest version from their site.

2.- I cant edit the /etc/netword/ interfaces file since its read-only.

I can connect to other wireless networks around my house so i know for sure the card is working but im not sure what driver im running.. and i read somewhere that ubuntu 10.04 came with madwifi restricted drivers pre-installed.

Im not sure if i should uninstall my active drivers and then try installing the drivers i downloaded from madwifi’s site.. or what im doing wrong.. please any help would be appreciated!

By: u2uonly

u2uonly — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 08:11:13 +0000

have you found a usb adapter which can work in master mode?
I also try to make my box working as an ap.

By: lyon'

lyon' — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 10:56:26 +0000

Really useful post!
I could have connected to the acces point, but the internet just seemed to be not working through it. I have an laptop with integrated wifi card. Pinging the server address was OK. What could the problem be?
Another question is how to make authentication (wep, wpa, wpa2)?
Thanks in advance!

By: rick

rick — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:25:55 +0000

This is nice, but wouldn’t it be easier to use IPCOP? I have been using it for years for both wireless and lan.

By: admin

admin — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:03:50 +0000

Sean,

Thanks for pointing out the masquerading/bridging point, I’ll update the post!

At one point, we had a requirement to use wireless for around 30 heavy internet users. We tried everything from cheap linksys/dlink APs to expensive managed Cisco APs and they all had issues under high load. The most recent is a WRT300n which performed better than most but still had its issues. I also tried alternative firmware like dd-wrt where you can see most of them are maxing out their CPUs.

What you suggested with using APs as APs is actually what I was doing before I found a working PCI card. I had a second NIC installed, a hub and two wireless APs (a cheap encore one and an apple airport express)

This did indeed work but I found that it was a bit slower than using a PCI card in AP mode. Also they’re bulkier items and need their own power sources. That’s why the USB adapters would be so great. They’re cheap, easily expendable (up to 5m without a powered extension cable), you can purchase them with standard antenna connectors and they’re so small.

Also PCI (and perhaps USB) wifi should allow us to play with the transmit power which you can’t do on cheap APs unless you flash the firmware with something like dd-wrt.

With regards to squid. I already installed it as a transparent proxy so no clients need to be configured. I just didn’t have time to write about the setup in the post yet

By: Sean

Sean — Sat, 30 May 2009 18:11:53 +0000

Which APs fail under load?

You could also use the APs as APs — bridge the wireless side to the wired LAN side and feed multiple APs back into a wired port on the Linux box. Leave the Linux box as a router (masquerading is not bridging, BTW. It’s a form of routing).

That would let you use cheap APs to increase your wireless footprint, while giving you the benefit of having a real router handling the connection to the Internet and services.

You mentioned using squid… Are you going to set up transparent proxying or make proxying optional?