I have a laptop and I want to use it as wireless range extender.
Is there any guide or howto? The task looks trivial, but I can’t find any example
Is this what we are looking for ?
https://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/wireless/410475-how-setup-access-point.html
No. The link provides a manual for setting up Access Point. In my case AP is allraedy set by ISP and I only need to extend it’s signal inside the building
You could try asking at Real Help For Your Small Network - SmallNetBuilder. You may some answers for general linux systems.
If you get it running, repeater mode will cut the throughput by half and in any case the performance of the laptop may not be as good as a dedicated box in repeater or AP mode. If you can get power line working (depends upon wiring standards) the it may be better to use power line to your extender laptop (ethernet) and the use the laptop in AP mode. However you can get powerline wifi extenders
- tosiara wrote, On 01/22/2013 02:46 PM:
> I have a laptop and I want to use it as wireless range extender.
Technical problems aside, does that make sense? Why not buy one of those 30 Euro extender thingies and be done with it?
Just curious
Uwe
On 01/23/2013 12:55 PM, Uwe Buckesfeld wrote:
> * tosiara wrote, On 01/22/2013 02:46 PM:
>> I have a laptop and I want to use it as wireless range extender.
>
> Technical problems aside, does that make sense? Why not buy one of those 30 Euro
> extender thingies and be done with it?
>
> Just curious
I learned a long time ago that many people have an urge to use a 600 Euro
computer to replace a 30 Euro part.
The one thing the computer could do that a 30 Euro part could not is setup the
retransmit on a different channel and avoid the halving of the wireless
throughput. To do that, you would need a second wireless interface and run the
computer as an AP with one wireless interface as the WAN port, and the second as
the LAN port. The reliability would probably be way down, and I would not
recommend that solution.
I have made a little progress and now I’m able to connect to upstream router using wpa_supplicant and create Access Point on the same interface. But now I have a serious issue: if I join two interfaces into a bridge - wpa_supplicant stops working.
And I noticed as soon as I enable 4addr on my wireless adapter wpa_supplicant stops working too
Are there any tips how to use wpa_supplicant on a bridged wireless adapter?
Wireless bridge is still not possible, so here is my solution with NAT
Wireless Repeater with NAT
# create virtual wlan adapter and run HostAP
iw phy phy0 interface add hostap.wlan1 type managed
ifconfig hostap.wlan1 down
ifconfig hostap.wlan1 hw ether 12:34:56:78:90:ab
ifconfig hostap.wlan1 192.168.0.1 up
hostapd /etc/hostapd.conf -B
# start DHCP and DNS
systemctl start dhcpd.service
systemctl start named.service
# connect to upstream AP
wpa_supplicant -D wext -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa.conf -B
dhcpcd wlan0
# enable NAT
iptables --table nat --append POSTROUTING --out-interface wlan0 -j MASQUERADE
iptables --append FORWARD --in-interface hostap.wlan1 -j ACCEPT
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
Hope this helps
Moderators, if possible, please update top post with the solution. Thanks
Yes you can have better option by using best 150 mbps wireless repeater for that you can refer to http://wifi.digisol.com/product.html website to have more details regarding product and price.