Wireless network without a wireless router?

English Network/Internet
1

I understand it is possible to create a wireless network without the use of a wireless router by using a wifi network card. I have wifi card working with openSUSE 11.4 (driver installed, device detected correctly and I have internet access) but how do I setup a wireless network in my home so that other devices such as my netbook can connect to the wireless network?
I use NetworkManager but I can use ifup if needed.

Thanks for any help.

2

On 09/29/2011 04:06 AM, echoes- wrote:
>
> I understand it is possible to create a wireless network without the use
> of a wireless router by using a wifi network card. I have wifi card
> working with openSUSE 11.4 (driver installed, device detected correctly
> and I have internet access) but how do I setup a wireless network in my
> home so that other devices such as my netbook can connect to the
> wireless network?
> I use NetworkManager but I can use ifup if needed.

Your description is a little fuzzy, but I think you want to have you want to
have one of your computers serve as a router. To do that, you need a machine
with a wired connection and wireless card. The necessary software to complete
the setup is hostapd, but be aware that not all wireless card/driver
combinations support AP mode. An old article describing how to do it can be found at

http://forums.opensuse.org/forums/english/get-technical-help-here/wireless/410475-how-setup-access-point.html

3

Thanks so much! I’m gonna give it a try.

4

I followed your guide until creating the script. Would it be possible to “recreate” the functionality of the script in yast?

5

On 09/30/2011 09:56 PM, echoes- wrote:
>
> I followed your guide until creating the script. Would it be possible to
> “recreate” the functionality of the script in yast?

Perhaps, but you would have to rewrite YaST. This script needs to be run when
the AP is started. YaST mostly sets up data files for scripts that are already
written.

If you want a package, you need to buy a router. As I said in the article, you
are converting a $600 computer into a $40 router. That does not make sense to
me. I wrote the script because I need to test drivers; however, I have 4 routers
already.

6

Sorry, this might sound like a stupid question, but in order to make this run at boot (or after login?) is it fine to add the script to the Autostart module in KDE’s “Startup and Shutdown” System Settings?

7

I get this when I try to start the script:

sudo ./wifiap.sh start
Starting AP mode for wlan0 at address 192.168.0.1
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Server 4.2.1
Copyright 2004-2011 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/
Not searching LDAP since ldap-server, ldap-port and ldap-base-dn were not specified in the config file
Wrote 0 leases to leases file.
Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:1a:ef:09:1e:12/192.168.0.0/24
Sending on LPF/wlan0/00:1a:ef:09:1e:12/192.168.0.0/24
Sending on Socket/fallback/fallback-net
Configuration file: /root/hostapd.conf
ioctl[PRISM2_IOCTL_PRISM2_PARAM]: Operation not supported
Could not enable hostapd mode for interface wlan0
hostap driver initialization failed.
rmdir[ctrl_interface]: No such file or directory

8

Nevermind, I just had to choose the nl80211 driver instead of the hostap driver.

I also had to specify the DNS on the client’s end with NetworkManager.

Thanks for the help!