Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

rage.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 105 posts

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

#61

Post by cubix »

johnklos wrote: post #26

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 wo…

I rigged up something similar in my first corporate job in 2000, plugging an ORiNOCO into the PCMCIA slot of my corporate laptop and a spare at my desk. My boss, an old mainframe guy, was blown away that I could check email during the team meeting in the conference room without going back to my desk. Now wifi is so ubiquitous we don't even think about it.

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

#62

Post by haroldp »

johnklos wrote: post #26

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 wo…

I love every word in this story. Remember when hacking was joyful?

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

#64

Post by rektide »

simoncion wrote: post #59
rektide wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Openwrt works fine but it's all so special. Special software running on special hardware. Just having a PC with a good card in it has soundsd greatly appealing for so long. During the PogoPlug/SheevaPlug phase I had some nice repurposed hardware that ran upstream Debian, had good ram, and some capable atheros wifi. It was so nice having a less special purpose system, having just a regular computer that happened to ha…

> Openwrt works fine but it's all so special. Special software running on special hardware. Doesn't OpenWRT work on x86 hardware just fine? https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org/?version=22.03.3&targe... > (You can select 32-bit x86 or two other flavors if you don't want to run on x86/64.)

OpenWRT is itself ultra special. It has a very narrow mission statement. If you learn openwrt, and then want to runa desktop, you'll have to learn a new thing.

The special purpose nature of openwrt makes it surpemely disinteresting to me. Actually setting up a home network with masquerading, dhcp, some dns is shockingly easy with systemd. Add hostapd and some extras, maybe miniupnpd, traffic shappers, optionally some firewall and you're set.

There's a comfort & perceived desire to "make things simple for oneself" by using "tools meant for the job". But it's a shitty suboptimization. Openwrt isnt really that special or good, it's chiefly just the most aggressively well maintained way to run linux on a lot of little router systems. If that roadblock went away & we could use whatever, there would be a shitload more people trying new stuff atop much more general linux oses.

I've been using openwrt for over q decade. It's fine. It does the job. But it's an evolutionary dead end, will ne what it is forever, and it's a bit special. It has a bunch of NIH'ed smaller sized alternative tools that no one else in the linux multiverse uses. Their own package manager, their own dbus replacement, their own config systems. It's all generally fine but it's made practically no dent in the broader Linux world, it requires a lot of onboarding & learning to get actually decent at, it has a lot of constraints/narrow options, and it'd be lovely if we had any choice at all to run something else, something more normal & regular, but we've beem trapped running openwrt on these weird ass strange devices for almost two decades. It sucks being tied to openwrt, openwrt is the specia system, and having more generic Linux computing we could be doing here has such huge appeal.

I'd love do know how many people use x86 openwrt, for laughs. Dozens? A hundred? How many actually log in & use that machine with any regularity? Openwrt indeed can run on regular hardware, but in practice there's no reason to, no advantage to, no cause here, because if we have real computing hardware that isnt batshit insane & troublesome we immediately reach for mainstream regular Linux distros, not the very special opemwrt thing that exists only really for weird hardware.

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

#65

Post by gregatragenet3 »

Wow. glad y'all enjoyed that little walk down memory lane.

I am still around and still working in tech -- although nowadays work involves poking API's to launch servers and related infrastructure vs. the time that this article was written where someone in my line of work had to drive to the datacenter whenever a server needed an upgrade or became unresponsive. My roommate at the time is still around too, his work is in the realm of reducing internet latency in routers by doing clever things with their packet buffers.

Some 5 or 10 years after the howto was written Cisco/Belkin reached out to us. Someone had patented putting a wireless card in a router, and they wanted our help with showing there was prior art. That process opened my eyes because to a couple guys like us it seemed like an obvious thing to do to put a wireless card in and network with it, like any other network card at the time it just had an antenna instead of a cat5 cable. Nothing 'inventive' about doing it, its just a logical step. I think they ended up settling so maybe that original patent-holder gets a couple cents on every wireless router, not sure.

I remember the hostname that document was served from when it was written, a tower PC hostname 'screamingslave' (NiN reference), and it served that document from the Redwood Estates (remote) side of the wireless link. 'for work' my work is all cloud infra, I still run my own personal server -- something I built and configured to run openstack, to be a "cloud in a box" -- hostname 'mantaro' (a reference to the river that is the source of the amazon), and that document is served from a VM running within, hostname 'immora' (doom reference).

It seems to be surviving the HN hug-of-death so far, but it was written in what was state-of-the-art for 1998, just a plain html doc, with maybe a css style sheet (did the original even have that?). Yeah no Nuxt/Vue SPA with some nosql backend.

If you wanna see another of my efforts in 98, I was also involved in bringing 'directory services' to Linux, tldr something more modern (at the time) than NIS, using LDAP for managing your users and other directory objects. That doc can be found here http://www.rage.net/ldap/ldapns-howto/

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

#66

Post by johnklos »

unqueued wrote: post #57
johnklos wrote: post #26

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 wo…

John, at around that time you mentioned, you gifted me with my first shell account on one of your coffeshop servers, Reva. I just wanted to say THANK YOU. Up until then, I had read books about unix from the library, and had failed to install Mandrake on my laptop, but being able to access such a well configured NetBSD environment was really helpful and set me on a good path. I had never been truant from school before…

This made me smile :D

You know, I'm still running servers with many of the same accounts that were there twenty years ago. Your home may still be on one (with the password disabled, obviously). Write me directly and let's see!

My email address is my first name @ my last name dot com, and my handle here is my full name.

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

#67

Post by amannm »

amannm wrote: post #55
shmerl wrote: post #21

Why is situation with wireless routers still so messed up? Barely anything new coming out has proper upstream Linux drivers. Broadcom chipsets are one of the worst offenders, but others are barely any better. Why can't Intel make some?

device or chip manufacturers won't spend the money to develop/support/maintain in-kernel linux drivers if they don't think it will ultimately net them enough of an ROI based on sales of the corresponding device or chip. the market for non-carrier branded, end user hackable, linux based home routers is pretty small and probably shrinking as a percent of the overall market for wifi chipped devices.

informative post: https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/hardware/general-hardw...

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

#68

Post by kcb »

hamandcheese wrote: post #29
uniformlyrandom wrote: post #8

What if I'd like to build a linux router out of modern hardware? I would like to stop upgrading routers every two years (maybe just upgrade the wifi cards in it), and have full control over router's UI (command line is fine). Is this a stupid idea?

Firewalla, Pretectli, and plenty of Amazon/AliExpress vendors sell little mini PCs with a bunch of ethernet ports. I use one running NixOS as my home router. Re: wifi cards, I've not seen any wifi cards that seem like a suitable replacement to a dedicated AP. I just use a consumer Asus router in bridge mode instead of router mode.

One thing if you go with one of those random Amazon/Aliexpress pcs is ditch the power brick they come with. Those generic things are stupid under built and inefficient. Get a proper matching one from a brand name like Mean Well, Delta, FSP, CWT, Adaptertech, Lite-on. Really important if you’re running it 24/7.

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

#69

Post by rendaw »

GuB-42 wrote: post #33
uniformlyrandom wrote: post #8

What if I'd like to build a linux router out of modern hardware? I would like to stop upgrading routers every two years (maybe just upgrade the wifi cards in it), and have full control over router's UI (command line is fine). Is this a stupid idea?

Not stupid, but you also have to understand the downsides. I once did that, essentially just a linux PC with extra network cards. It doubled as a NAS too. One issue is simply that when you are playing with it (updates and all that), you won't have a router and you will lose internet access for all your connected devices. You also have to consider power outages (UPS highly recommended) and electricity costs. It gives…

I've always been interested in this, but I was worried about the efficiency/performance loss. I don't really know how off the shelf routers work, but I'd assume most of the routing logic happens near the hardware... is this not the case? Or is linux able to move routing logic into the hardware so there's no significant performance difference?

My own reasons are

1. It's an extra piece of hardware, when I already have an underutilized server

2. The consumer router web ui is terrible, updates are painful, diagnostics are lacking, etc

3. More power with linux, and a consistent interface for it

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

#70

Post by dtaht »

jeffbee wrote: post #7
giuliomagnifico wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…and the prices! He is “happy” because using those spare parts he can spend only 1300$ for a wireless router.

It seemed reasonable at the time. I briefly used a DEC Multia with two Aironet LM4500 PCMCIA wireless cards as a point-to-point backhaul and access point. That was a lot of money for hardware but the cable company wanted tens of thousands of dollars to bring coax a very short distance to the site, and ADSL in those days was still something you could expect to deliver just 128kbps upstream under ideal conditions.

We used to use old DEC alphas as firewalls figuring the arch was so obscure as to not worry about binary attacks.
Post reply on HN