Hello world. 63 yr old noob is trying to create an access point using Linux-Wifi-Hotspot and PdaNet. PdaNet provides internet connection from phone by a proxy server using the WiFi Direct protocol to Linux-Wifi-Hotpot which is set to use a single wifi card to receive the phone's connection sharing and host an access point. I can connect to the phone and I can generate the hotspot but the internet does not pass through. I assume the problem is with the proxy because other than pass through, everything works. I know this is convoluted way of doing things, but can anyone help me?

Hello moulder51 & welcome to LQ. I'm even older than you and still ask for help here.

The same wifi card for client & server may just be possible, but it majes life hugely difficult.

What I did was buy a pair of mains powerline adapters. Connect one to the RJ45 network card socket, and the other to the router's RJ45 socket, and plug them both in. The mains cable acts as an RJ45 cable. I got mine secondhand for €10 each.

Hostapd I am looking at also. There's a lot of options that aren't needed in every use case, and network rerouting might have to be done.

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Hi business kid and thank you for the reply. It is demonstrably possible, It is the main feature of Linux-WiFi-Hotspot. I think the intent was to share out a rented connection. I agree that it makes things difficult but it's doable. I'm a pensioner on a budget so I'm reluctant to spend on equipment if I can do it with software for free.

My very imperfect understanding is that Linux-Wifi-Hotspot is in part a GUI front end for Hostapd. As someone who cut his teeth on DOS, I am not afraid of the command line but all this networking tech makes my brain hurt. I believe that Linux-Wifi-Hotspot is configuring the access point in a way that does not see the proxy server that PdaNet creates but I don't know why.

I can do what I am attempting in Windows with Connectify, a paid app, but I find this hugely unsatisfying. I think I need someone who knows Hostapd.

Thanx







i

With the networking stuff, the wifi card needs a client to connect, and a server to share. And they both think they are the only ones doing anything. Is there some reason you don't want to use the router to share, like everyone else does?

A good day to you sir. I don't have a modem. In my deep rural home, I barely have internet. Up to now, there hasn't been a need and I still think I can do without. Is I am clever enough.

At this point it's a matter of curiousity to me becaue I have already installed Windows on 15 year old potato laptop which is now serving as basic router ...in Windows, yuck.

I'm happy to share but back to the original post.

The goal is to share out the phone's internet in a way that will not trigger the carrier's throttling using only a phone and a laptop. This can be done in Windows with Connectify so I know it can be done and I am mulish to do it in Linux.

Since I know Hostadp is at the core of both Connectify and Linux-Wifi-Hotspot, that's what am trying to learn. Other than a class in Fourtran '77, I have no formal training but even I can tell that in order to use Hostapd effectively, it requires a broad knowledge base of network tech. I have sucessfully created an access point at the terminal using a generic config file but I don't understand half of what it's referencing.

My current thinking is to either force feed myself enough networking tech to know how to create a configuration for Hostapd that will meet my specific case or find some kind Guru who can tell me what needs to be changed in the Hostapd.conf file to allow Linux-Wifi-Hotspot to redircet to PdaNet's proxy.

Thanx

So you have some kind of "broadband" (Narrow Band, usually) and your windows box is the router?

HostApd is for when your linux box is the router, and you want it to act as a wifi hotspot for tablets or other PCs. But you're telling me your windows box is the router.

The last windows I really used was windows 98. I only got weekly BSODs. I closed my business in 2006 and sold the machines I needed windows for, so I moved to linux. I'm not up to speed on windows since. I did bits with various systems.

I'd ask your ISP

1. Why you haven't been supplied with a router.
2. How can you connect a linux box.
3. What type of connection have you anyhow?

There's a plethora of ways to connect online. Most use router(modem) --> wifi, but there's RJ45 connectors too. How is your windows box doing it?

That's the thing. There are no providers here, not even dial-up. You can get very spendy satellite internet or go with cellular service. I chose T-Mobile cell service. I haven't been provided with a router because there are no providers. Besides, my needs are simple. I don't need a WLAN or I didn't.

My Windows box works wirelessly. The phone provides an internet connection with PdaNet over a 5 Ghz link by proxy using the WiFi Direct protocol. The PC is running a PdaNet client app and Connectify creates a 2.4 Ghz access point, I did order a USB WiFi dongle to have two cards to make things easier. I considered building an OpenWRT machine to keep things Linux but configuration looked to be worse even than HostAPD and the Windows solution worked basically out of the box.

PdaNet and Connectify were chosen specifically over native solutions for their unique qualities and for other reasons. Each works well independently and in Windows at least, can work together. I could connect phone to computer any number of ways both wired and wireless, but I have requirements. In Linux I was attempting to use PdaNet, Proxyman, and Linux-Wifi-Hotspot.

Although I already have a Windows solution, it tasks me that I haven't yet met the requirements under Linux. Do you have any working knowledge of HostAPD? Specifically how to make HostAPD take a proxy.

Look, why not stop all this farting about, use a wifi hotspot in the phone, and let everything use that? Wifi direct is Peer To Peer, 2 connections. Use a mobile hotspot.at sets up a DHCP server and you can set your ESSID and password. You'll never talk to your phone in linux while it has a PTP with (spit!)m$ windoze. You don't need hostapd either. You need dchpcd, or dhclient.

Hello again. I scanned the user agreement for this site and I think what am about to say is a gray area. I apologize for any possible misuse of this sites policies. The reason for the wonky set up is entirely to circumvent the carrier's egregious hotspot limit.

I am not asking how to do so nor am I suggesting anyone else do it. You can say what you want, but it smacks of greed to say I can have all the "unlimited" data I want but not if I share it. Data is data. On the phone or on the computer it's the same. They just want to add an extra charge.

Your last reply indicates that you know a thing or two about networking but HostAPD maybe not as much. Can you accept my chosen topology as a given and go from there?

It is my belief that someone sharp could look at this set up and with a small edit in the configuration file have it going in no time. It looks to me that the reason HostAPD is not passing the connection ts because it is looking at the wireless interface (in my case wlo1) as it is configured to do, but the connection is being provide by proxy. The MAN page indicate hostapd_cli has options for ethernet, wlan, and loop but makes no mention of proxy support. Maybe a lower level tool like IW would be better?

I remember when LAN was only to let one computer access another one's disk drive and that would be a floppy.

Yes, I know a thing or two about networking, but only that. In my (hardware) Electronic Engineering Degree we did the course material for CCNA 1-4 in years 2 & 3.

I get it about the access point. Your topology is unworkable. I can offer to unsubscribe.

No, I don't know that much about hostapd except that it's Access Point software.If you think an edit is the way out, start a new thread and post it in post #1. My belief is that PTP is 2 boxes only, and you will not configure that to forward, especially from M$ Windows.Networking isn't that bad on windows, because they ripped off the entire BSD networking stack (as did Apple), but the BSD license allows that. But PTP excludes sharing, which is exactly what you're trying to do.

Can you set up Bluetooth to the Windows box, and PTP to linux? or 2 PTP connections?

You might simply use a personal router or pi-hole machine connected to the access point and have other machines connected on the other side. To the ISP they would see one machine, and on the other side (the LAN) you could have several machines. That was a standard connection method in times past when the internet was accessible only by something like a dial-up modem which could not be directly 'shared'.

The only thing the ISP could monitor, and most do constantly, is the amount of data used since NAT hides the internal LAN from the WAN on the ISP side.

Hey Kid Hey computersavy,

Thank you very much. I knew you were smart. I needed someone to tell me that but I would point out I am in fact using a similar topology in the Windows box as I type. Yes, Wifi Direct is P2P but I would only be employing it to link the potato router computer. Since Connectify is closed source, I can't easily tell what it's doing but it can be done. So far it's all good but I know this is a game of cat and mouse for the carrier.

Hearing something can't be done in Linux makes me sad but I intend to keep working toward a Linux solution. I hope it doesn't entail my learning a degree equivalent to do it. You're free to unsubscribe or join me for the ride. Either way I thank you.

May the road rise to meet you. Pity I can't buy you a beer.

My original goal was to do this with only what I had on hand. Where I am, we do the best we can with what we've got. I think a router or Pi hole could certainly work but I don't have either. A Pi hole is a very good suggestion.

Haha, that's the Irish joke postcard. There's a saying in Irish "Go n'eirigh an bothair leath" which means "May you have success on the road." But the verb 'eirigh' also means to arise, or get up, anything that has upward motion in it. So it can be translated that way. After a hard night on whiskey or poitín (pronounced "putcheen") it was a very believeable occurrence!

Glad you seem to be sorted on the network. I'll lurk. I might learn something. The ISP will notice a sharp uptick in Downloads, I imagine. Can you get the Starlink service over there, or is it a rip-off?

Hey Kid,

I think it's wonderful that you're keeping the language alive. I'm a Texan so of course I speak Spanish but my family has deep Irish roots. My maternal grandfather's surname was Tabor and his father came over from Dublin.

Yeah no my neighbor had Starlink but the level of service for what he paid put it squarely in the rip off category.

I'll be careful not to tip my hand to the carrier.

I noticed something in Windows that's got me side tracked. When I was trying to sort out what Connectify was doing, I tried to to create a hotspot with the native Windows app and it worked flawlessly. It turns out I don't need Connectify. So I thought maybe I don't need Linux-Wifi-Hotspot either. I was only using it because of its ability to host and client on one card at the same time. I have two cards now.

So it turns out that the network manager I'm using has a quirk. If you use it to start a hotspot, it suspends all other wireless services. So that's out but I'm looking at other network managers. There may be one that suits. Also I am moving away from hostapd. You may be right. It might not be suitable.

I took your suggestion and created a new thread. You'll see me in the software forum now. If I can do in Windows, I can do it in Linux.

I started with the hostapd approach here using: a powerline ethernet adapter into the RJ45 socket going to my router; and a wifi card for my hotspot. It didn't work, and I said "I'll get back to that," but I never did.

I went to Primary school in the 1960s, so we were taught the old Irish script & alphabet, which was modernised for typewriters. I even modified my keyboard layout to be able to write using the accents (a French type acute on the vowels and an 'abovedot' on consonants). The Irish alphabet was different.