MadwifiNG at Hacknight
So tonight at hacknight we are sitting at Cal Anderson park, I was able to fire up a Metrix box running Pyramid Linux with a lithium ion laptop battery to act as a repeater from the local cafe. The cool part is that we are using a single radio which is simultaneously a STA (client) and Access Point using the capabilities of the next generation Madwifi drivers. With MadwifiNG you can create multiple virtual interfaces one being a client and one being an AP but both existing on the same physical radio. Some caveats are that you have to be using the same channel on both virtual interfaces, and you have to create the interfaces in a certain order. You need to create the Access Point interface first, and then create the STA interface. In Pyramid Linux adding the following to the /etc/network/interfaces file, just replace the ssids:
auto ath0
iface ath0 inet static
address 192.168.91.1
netmask 255.255.255.0
broadcast 192.168.91.255
post-down wlanconfig ath0 destroy
pre-up wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode ap
pre-up iwconfig ath0 essid “SWN-Hacknight” channel 01 rate auto rts off frag off
pre-up ifconfig ath0 up
pre-up sleep 3
auto ath1
iface ath1 inet dhcp
post-down wlanconfig ath1 destroy
pre-up wlanconfig ath1 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode sta nosbeacon
pre-up iwconfig ath1 essid “Metrix” rate auto rts off frag off
pre-up sleep 3
