I was using this Cyberciti guide to try and set up an older computer as a wireless access point. The computer is sitting on a network without DHCP. Unfortunately, that guide assumes you have DHCP set up on your host network, so it does not go into setting up DHCP. I followed a guide on the Debian Wiki to get DHCP set up.

Right now just for testing purposes, I have an open wireless network named "Jim". My wireless devices can connect to the Jim network and they can ping each other and the gateway, but they cannot access the internet. I know this is because I'm not using a bridge interface like the hostapd guide instructs, but since this machine is acting as a DHCP server, is a bridge interface still the proper method? Can't I create a route or iptables rule that will send all traffic from wlan0 out eth0?

Here are some pastes to give some more insight on my situation:

ifconfig - A question about this: Does anyone know where this "mon.wlan0" interface could have come from? It kind of just showed up.

hostapd.conf - The "driver" option is commented out because hostapd will not run if I leave it in there.

/etc/network/interfaces

dhcpd.conf

About all I know is that hostapd creates a monitor mode interface (mon.wlan0) for receiving and transmitting management frames.

DHCP has nothing to do with a bridge. A bridge will allow the wired and wireless networks to be on the same subnet just like a regular hardware wireless router. It isn't required and you can use iptables and ipforwarding to route traffic.

Wow, didn't realize it was as easy as just enabling ip forwarding. Thread is now solved.