This thread is to discuss the article titled: Building a Slackware Wireless Access Point

I used your document this weekend to setup an AP on my slackware 9 box. I commented out the encryption key so that I had an open system and was able to pick up the ESSID and connect to the AP. The problem was that I was not able to retrieve an IP address for my client system. I'll continue working on this to see if the problem is with my setup.

Few questions:

1: In your setup what range of IP Addresses are given out as DHCP addresses?

2: To change the broadcast IP range do you change the following in rc.wlan0 & rc.firewall?

/etc/rc.d/rc.wlan0
# Original document had this: IPADDR=192.168.1.1
IPADDR=192.168.###.1

/etc/rc.d/rc.firewall
# Add masquerading to the POSTROUTING chain in the nat table.
$IPT --table nat \
--append POSTROUTING \
--out-interface eth0 \

# here is the change ### = ### in IPADDR= in rc.wlan0
# old line was: --source 192.168.1.0/24 \
--source 192.168.###.0/24 \
--destination 0/0 \
--jump MASQUERADE

Sorry for not responding... didn't realize that there was a post in the discussion.

Currently I don't have DHCP set up for my wireless network (that's why it's in the "to do" section.) If I were to set up DHCP my range of valid host IP addresses would be 192.168.1.2 to 192.168.1.254. That's because I use a 24 bit network mask, which leaves the last eight bits available to create unique host addresses. One of those addresses is considered the "network" address (192.168.1.0). One of those addresses is taken by my Linux box (192.168.1.1) and the other is taken by the broadcast address (192.168.1.255).

I'm not sure what you mean by changing your broadcast IP range. If you're using a 24 bit network mask then your broadcast address is 192.168.1.255. If you're using a different number of bits for the network portion of your address then you'll need to change your broadcast address so that all non-network bits are set.

Maybe this example will help. I'll show the binary addresses with braces around the host portion of the addresses, then I'll show the dotted quad equivalence:

Let's say that you need addresses for more than 254 hosts (.1 throught .254), so you make your network mask 23 bits instead of 24 bits. That means you can use 9 bits to create 510 distinct host addresses instead of 8 bits to create 254 distinct host addresses.

Your network address (where the host portion is all zeros) in binary will be 11000000.10101000.0000001[0.00000000] which is 192.168.2.0 in dotted quad notation. Your broadcast address (where the host portion is all ones) in binary will be 11000000.10101000.0000001[1.11111111] which is 192.168.3.255 in dotted quad notation. The valid hosts are 11000000.10101000.0000001[0.00000001] which is 192.168.2.1 to 11000000.10101000.0000001[1.11111110] which is 192.168.3.254.

It's easier just to stick with a 24 bit network mask unless you really need more addresses than that. You should consult a good TCP/IP administration book. O'reilly has a pretty good one.

I was interested by the need you mentionned, of adding a "modprobe" in rc.somewhere.
Maybe that's why my own adapter works when just manually installed, and not after reboot.

Hey guys,
Nice document there !!! I might be tempted to by a WiFi card just to try it... My question is: did you ever thought of how many clients you can hook to this access point ?? I would be interested to, mayby use your technology to offer hotspoting in my area...

Tks for any replies!

nice document, I added that file and executed it and my card is an access point that easy, then I had 3 other cards in that box so I fired them up and gave them the network key and they all have a connection to the First card

Current specs : 4 atheros Mini PCI cards running on slack 10.1 kernal 2.4
Running Madwifi drivers

Later on I am goign to try to fire up all of those cards as separate access points and see if I actually get an internet connection with them, it apears that I would but you never know since i am not sure if I have an ip address or not.

CONCERNS!
You said its not done with DHCP so would that mean I would have to assign each client an ip address in the 192.168.1.xx range in order to reach the internet?????????????????????????

Problems!
My only problem is the calling code that I added to the rc.inet1 file it calls the rc.wlan0 file on boot but says that my interface is not found, then apears to be up when I iwconfig it but nothing can connect! Its easy enough to fix though I just took the code out of rc.inet1 and just manually did a ./rc.wlan0 and all is well, its not a big deal since I dont really need the access point to go up at boot automatically but if somone has a workaround would be helpfull to post it or an explanation of why it wouldnt find my card at boot but does just fine afterwards

went to netgear and did a product search for the MA311 and this is what i got Did You Mean: ma111

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is there another card that will work like the ma311 from netgear?

madwifimoody,

I went to netgear.com and looked in their product finder on the first page. The product finder is just above the product search. I clicked on the button and found the ma111. Here is the page:

http://netgear.com/products/details/MA111.php

No, that's not it. Look on Amazon .

I wrote the tutorial a couple of years ago, so I don't think that the card is in production anymore. Anything with a Prism chipset should work, I think.

thanks for replying so quikly do you know which linksys/netgear ect ect. adapters that currently have the prism chipsets in them the reason im asking is because im looking into setting up a community based free access network in my area id prefeer using linux to do it with rather than some off the shelf ap becuase linux offers so much more plus i can pick up PI and PII for less then $25 dollers in my area then add the cost of the card + material and the price is about the same as buying a crummy off the shelf product that doesent allow you to do half of what linux with a few add ons will do
i origonaly posted in the wireless networking section about this with no answers then found your tutorial i used to run slackware it was my first distro i installed and ran for about a year any ways thanks for the info keep up the good work

Best thing to do is take a look at the hostap website, and perhaps contact the author of the driver.

Wow, this is much later than the other posts, but I would like to thank the author for a wonderfully written tutorial. I had numberous problems, definately the orinoco_pci driver problem, and a few other script problems, but they were all by fault of me. I kept re-reading the tutorial, and re-reading it, and finally got it! Thanks a bunch.

My new AP:
Slack 10.2
Linksys B card
....on a 233mhz laptop!

...and my college says "no wireless systems"

pfffft, it'll just look like a regular computer on the LAN

-Jimmy