Network Setup
802.11b Setup
The hostap driver module hostap_cs which was compiled into the kernel is bound to the 802.11b NIC via the
/etc/pcmcia/hostap.conf file:
device "hostap_cs"
class "hostap" module "hostap_cs"
All further configuration of the WLAN interface is done when the hostap daemon is loaded in
/etc/rc.d/init.d/hostapd.
The parameters for the hostap daemon are read from
/share/hotspot/etc/hostapd.conf
The parameters ESSID, channel, nickname, RTS threshold, fragmentation threshold and sensitivity are read from
/share/hotspot/etc/wifi.conf and applied with iwconfig.
IP Topology
The wlan0 interface is assigned the IP address 10.11.12.13/24 [
RFC 1918]. The clients are assigned IP addresses in the range 10.11.12.14 to 10.11.12.254, allowing for a maximum of 240 clients connected at a time. In our test network setup, the eth0 interface is assigned the IP address 172.23.5.12/27, but this address of course can and should be chosen depending on the existing environment.
The clients get their IP addresses, the default routers address and the DNS server addresses assigned via DHCP. The configuration for the dhcpd can be found
here.
image #1: network topology
