Mandrake or Redhat as a WIFI Access point?
 

I'm a bit tight and would like to use linux as a wireless router in infrastructure (not ad-hoc) mode. I'll be using a belkin pci wireless card and a speedtouch 330 usb modem for my adsl connection. I know both work within linux but I'm not sure about setting up as an access point.

Can it be done?

Any help is appreciated

Most Prism cards have the capability to act as an AP. I'm not familiar with your Belkin card. Try the HostAP page for some hints & HOWTOs. http://hostap.epitest.fi/

The Realtek drivers for the RTL8180 can be put into access point mode too. The drivers are fairly horrible though, just do a search on this forum for the chipset and you'll find lots of people have had problems. I have turned on ap mode before and it seems to work, although I haven't extensivly tested it.

Corona

Could you possibly provide info for setting up the 8180 as an AP?
i wish to build a freenode with mine.

I was using mine as an ap for some time, before I got a real ap. It did an alright job, not sure if there was a speed hit or not.
Anyway, first you need the right kernel, either 2.4.20 or 2.4.21
If you're not already running it, it's the kernel in red hat 9, or compile it yourself. There's plenty of howto's on compiling kernels, just start at google.
Then get the rtl8180 package
ftp://152.104.125.40/cn/wlan/rtl8180...v_v15_rh90.zip
Once that's unpacked, look at the Makefile, there will be a section where there's two lines, one commented out, for whether it runs in infra/adhoc mode or in ap more, make sure the ap one is the one not commented. compile it, ie make && make install
install the module, modprobe rtl8180_24x
hopefully it'll work alright, it always did for me.
then look at the wlanup and wlandown scripts, and the descriptions of commands in the readme, should be able to work out how they run.

Good Luck,
Corona