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DIY linux accesspoint

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Monday, 18 April, 2011

DIY linux accesspoint

As space is at a premium at my parents and brother, I needed to implement a compact wireless accesspoint. Both already have a linux based server, so I went looking for a way to use the server as an accesspoint. After searching for a bit, I found some chipsets can be be put in master mode, making them suitable to use as an accesspoint.

After browsing a bit, I found this USB dongle on Ebay.

It is an Edup 54G wireless dongle, quick enough for what we need.

The dongle is based on the Prism 54G chipset. There is quite extensive documentation available on the linux driver for this dongle:

http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/p54

Don't forget to download the firmware and put it in /lib/firmware. The dongle won't work without the firmware.

Next was setting up an accesspoint. This is quite easy using hostapd. Install the package:

apt-get install hostapd

And create a configuration in /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf

interface=wlan0
bridge=eth0
driver=nl80211
logger_syslog=-1
logger_stdout=1
logger_stdout_level=2
debug=0
dump_file=/tmp/hostapd.dump
ssid=your ssid
channel=4
hw_mode=g
wpa=2
wpa_passphrase=<passphrase>
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_pairwise=CCMP
wpa_group_rekey=600
wpa_gmk_rekey=86400

If the setup is run with a bridge (I add the wlan0 interface to a bridge called eth0), you need to add the bridge configuration item, otherwise the network won't work. As the eth0 bridge already has a dhcp server running on it, everything is ready to go. Get your wireless clients and connect.