[Sussex] New Lappy

[Steve Dobson]

Gareth

On Wed, Aug 11, 2004 at 09:52:50AM +0100, Gareth Ablett wrote:
> Hmm some good info thanks, I've decided it need to purchase a 802.11b
> card plus access point to get anywhere but but this info gives me hope
> that I may be abal eto do it.

Assuming that you already have a Linux PC permanently running the simplest
way to create an Wireless AP is to buy a Prism based card and then run
hostapd on the machine.  This is what I'm doing.

The hostap kernel driver has been driving my card for ages now (machines
been up for 77 days) and you don't need much power (my AP system is an
old Pentium 100MHz).  The hostapd provides the extra stuff need to turn
the Prism WiFi card into a base station.

Steve

# lspci -vv -s 0:d.0
0000:00:0d.0 Network controller: Harris Semiconductor Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset (rev 01)
        Subsystem: D-Link System Inc DWL-520 Wireless PCI Adapter
        Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV+ VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B-
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
        Latency: 64, Cache Line Size: 0x08 (32 bytes)
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 9
        Region 0: Memory at fffbf000 (32-bit, prefetchable)
        Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2
                Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0+,D1+,D2+,D3hot+,D3cold-)
                Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-

# lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
hostap_pci             51032  2
hostap                102760  1 hostap_pci

# apt-cache show hostapd
Package: hostapd
Priority: optional
Section: net
Installed-Size: 168
Maintainer: Francois Gurin <matrix at debian.org>
Architecture: i386
Version: 1:0.1.3-1
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.2.ds1-4)
Recommends: hostap-modules
Filename: pool/main/h/hostapd/hostapd_0.1.3-1_i386.deb
Size: 50450
MD5sum: f86fff97c86e619d5fac224a97e0cf23
Description: IEEE 802.11 AP and IEEE 802.1X Authenticator for Host AP driver
 hostapd is an optional user space component for Host AP driver. It
 adds more features to the basic IEEE 802.11 management included in the
 kernel driver: using external RADIUS authentication server for MAC
 address based access control, IEEE 802.1X Authenticator and dynamic
 WEP keying, RADIUS accounting.