How to build a Linux-based wireless router out of spare parts (1998)

I switched to generic amd64 machines for my main router and 2 access points and haven't looked back. Each machine has a Mikrotik R11e-2HnD for 2.4GHz (AR958x), and a Compex card (WLE900VX?) for 5Ghz (QCA986x/988x, surplus). I think the 2.4GHz cards are fine with libre software out of the box, but the 5GHz cards want a firmware blob (which I consider the same freedom/security concerns as if the blob were loaded from flash, like the 2.4GHz cards).

I use the 2.4GHz extensively for phones/tablets/NoT devices and haven't noticed any problems with it. I don't actually use the 5GHz too much it but it seems to work. As far as newer technologies, I've never felt the need to squeeze as much bandwidth as possible out of wireless.

The main router has extensive firewall rules (nftables) and VPN links that would be an unmaintainable low-performance mess on a born-to-be-ewaste consumer router. The distro used to be Debian but I've moved them all to NixOS for easier admin.

Build a nice x86 based router between your uplink(s) and your LAN (it can also be your home server), then get cheap wireless routers and run them in access point mode. You can shop for wireless routers than run OpenWRT if you want to customize a bit more.

If you're feeling really fancy, you can built redundant routers and figure out failover; pfsync is available on OpenBSD and FreeBSD which allows for nearly seamless transition of NATed connections. Much easier to manage if you don't have to deal with the scourge that is PPPoE though.

Reminds me of creating a wireless access point using an old 80486 laptop and a ORiNOCO Bronze wireless card, a pigtail and an antenna. It was for one of the first free public wireless networks in Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan, New York, in 2001.

The bandwidth was provided by alt.coffee, a coffee and Internet cafe. It took some convincing to get the owners of alt.coffee to let me do this because they thought it would be bad for business. I had to convince them that people who could afford laptops with wireless weren't renting their computers, but they'd likely buy coffee. It worked :)

The laptop ran NetBSD and was installed in the awning of Accidental CDs a few doors down from alt.coffee because they were open 24/7, so someone was always at the front of the store. It routed its own private subnet that the NetBSD router in alt.coffee NAT'd and provided public IPv6 via 6bone.

I used 10BASE2 coax cable so I could run it along the building and nobody would mess with it, because it blended in perfectly with all the cable TV coax running on the outside of the building.

Aside from replacing the hard drive once, it ran for several years before regular access points became affordable.

What fun!

It's a great idea.

It's a bit of a pain the ass from a hardware sense. OpenWRT is available & easy but there's quite limited hardware (newely no wifi6), but honestly, at this point, I'd much rather use a real computer and some add-in cards.

Alas availability of hardware- specifically AP grade cards & things to plug them into is forsakenly awful. One has to scrounge around for increasingly absurdly priced botique adapters with awful availability. Thankfully we're starting to see m.2 form-factor show up, but it used to all be mini-pcie or just mini-pci, which wifi and only wifi uses & is hard to find. Oh and for real AP grade cards, they have good sized heatsinks and sometimes require auxiliary DC power, which is just like two test point stubs you have to freeform find power for.

For a while Compex was making cards eith equivalent-ish performance (same chipset) to a popular longrunning openwrt router, the Netgear x4s, for significantly under $100. But modern AP chips are super hard to find last I checked, had huge-ish boards, and were over $200.

Its a long hope but AP over USB is something I did for a long time & was never quite right & I eventually gave up, after trying dozens of chipsets, but folk like MediaTek seem to be far lower bullshit than the past shady ass sorrid sad history of wifi, and it feels like it may come about again. The ideal world is that like a $100 wifi usb card would just work. And then we could potentially seed these cheaper things all around; not as powerful or capable maybe, but more than made up for by having much smaller cell size: the actual cure-all of wifi!

Im excited for a world where we get beyond openwrt. It's been great but it's a tight narrow specific fix, on a troubled set of platforms, with a lot of constraints. A small PC-based revolution would be great to see. Just run Debian or Arch, what you know. Have standard & upgradeable componentry for cards. It'd be nice for wifi to not be so very very special & bundled.

Checks out but the format has changed. https://web.archive.org/web/19990429115208/http://www.rage.n...

Previously documented and viewable page omissions is Wayback Machine's court order problem.