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Table of Contents
Configuring a Wireless Access Point
This Howto explains how you can use your computer as a Wireless Accesspoint.
This means if the computer has an Internet connection and a wireless interface, other computers can use it's internet connection via wlan.
This is a very limited setup, it can be expanded with DHCP, DNS and a firewall, but this subjects can be found in other Howtos here at SlackDocs.
Requirements
The package hostapd is available at slackbuilds.org. It provides a daemon who listens on the wireless interface and allows the clients to authenticate.
Configuring hostapd
The configuration of hostapd is done in the file /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf, here an example
# the wireless interface interface=wlan0 # the driver -- there are other settings possible, but very likely the following works driver=nl80211 logger_syslog=-1 logger_syslog_level=2 logger_stdout=-1 logger_stdout_level=2 dump_file=/tmp/hostapd.dump ctrl_interface=/var/run/hostapd ctrl_interface_group=0 # The SSID -- i.e. the name of the wireless network (which will be shown when you scan for available networks) ssid=yourwlannamehere country_code=DE # check the manpage for hostapd and your hardware for the mode hw_mode=g channel=7 beacon_int=100 dtim_period=2 max_num_sta=255 rts_threshold=2347 fragm_threshold=2346 macaddr_acl=0 auth_algs=3 ignore_broadcast_ssid=0 eapol_key_index_workaround=0 eap_server=0 own_ip_addr=127.0.0.1 wpa=1 # The WPA2 key wpa_passphrase=your very secret passphrase here # the next settings refer to the settings in the clients wpa_supplicant.conf wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK wpa_pairwise=TKIP rsn_pairwise=CCMP
Be sure to read the manpage for hostapd
Configuring the client
In this Howto I'll only describe a minimal setup with a static IP-configuration.
IP_forwarding and routing
Enable IP forwarding
echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forwarding
Internet Connection Sharing
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
In this case eth0 is the interface which is connected to the internet. If your computer has a connection via ppp you shouls use ppp0 instead of eth0.
Sources
* Originally written by Markus Hutmacher