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Wireless Networking Software Linux Hardware

Build a Wireless ISP on Linux 79

Posted by Zonk from the do-it-yourself-kit dept.
JuiceMan wrote to mention an article that goes into the the specifics of setting up a Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) using Linux and a few easy scripts. From the article: "Wireless clients will have questions, and the Linux-based management tools I'll discuss will help you answer them. Here are some quick examples of how you can answer typical user questions - Question: 'Is the Internet down today? Why can't my browser find www.flakyhost.com?' Solution: First, check your wireless network with the scanap script; it will tell you about the wireless signal quality of all associated clients, including the one that's giving you problems. Then, check IP connectivity with the pingall script; it will tell you about the latency to your ISP's gateway, the DNS, and all your clients, including the problematic one. If these two scripts establish that your network is OK, try www.flakyhost.com."
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Build a Wireless ISP on Linux More

Build a Wireless ISP on Linux

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  • www.flakyhost.com (Score:4, Funny)

    by spamspamspamspam ( 865770 ) on Monday July 25, 2005 @04:30AM (#13154650)
    I still can't reach www.flakyhost.com!
    • You can guarentee that you will be able to reach it soon. Surely some /.'er (or evil spam host) will pick it up now!
    • FlakyHost reaches YOU!
    • A lot of Pay wireless ISPs, like the WickedWifi ISP they have around here, they require you to input your credit card on a website that loads, and also allow you to access a few websites of
      local interest for free.

      The odd thing is, even though you can't reach webpages, you can still ping websites.

      Well, if you can figure out how to set up an ICMP tunnel on a dedicated machine in your home, you can configure your computer to use ICMP tunnelling (via a shell script to do/undo it if you're the lazy type), and

  • How about (Score:1, Troll)

    by hobotron ( 891379 )

    I know im arguing about usability in a Linux thread, but listen to me, dont tell me about 50 neat little scripts I can use to figure out what is YOUR problem why MY wireless ISP wont work.

    If you must resort to small apps to figure out what the problem is please name them better than scanap and pingall, call them Happy Fix and bundle them all together to report a coherent message to the user and the administrator.

  • I'm a bit torn. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Monday July 25, 2005 @05:00AM (#13154723)
    Another WISP provides (expensive) connectivity from a nearby mountaintop, so I decided to subscribe to that service and share the bandwidth and cost with my neighbors.

    On the one hand, yay for him, he's giving his neighbors bandwidth cheaper than his competition.

    On the other hand, I wonder how long he'd be able to resell that bandwidth once his upstream WISP found out what he was doing?
    • Especially when the upstream runs the cheapskate script to locate the problem.
    • The article doesn't mention whether they're a commercial, consumer or wholesale WISP. If they're non-consumer based which is probably more likely, then I wouldn't imagine they'd care.
    • Isn't it great that we live in a society based on free market capitalism yet when someone tries to compete with an ISP immediately someone worries about whether or not they're doing something wrong?

      • Re:I'm a bit torn. (Score:5, Informative)

        by div_2n ( 525075 ) on Monday July 25, 2005 @05:57AM (#13154849)
        For a WISP, it's a different story than for a wired line ISP. A WISP only has so much bandwidth for a given frequency whereas a wired line ISP can keep adding massive bandwidth. In order to make a tower site cost-effective, "overselling" the bandwidth is the only way to go at low cost consumer prices. The law of averages says that at any one time, not everyone will be pulling data.

        If someone resells to their neighbors, then they will be more likely to peg their bandwidth slice all the time. As someone else made mention, it isn't a big deal if it is a commercial account because the WISP probably charges a premium for a CIR on the bandwidth as opposed to charging a minimum for a consumer MIR.

        CIR = Confirmed information rate (guaranteed bandwidth)

        MIR = Minimum information rate (best effort bandwidth)

        • In order to make a tower site cost-effective, "overselling" the bandwidth is the only way to go at low cost consumer prices.

          Or you could just limit the bandwidth per day/week/month.

          The internet was designed to be an ad-hoc peer-to-peer network. ISPs need to keep this in mind when they try to restrict reselling. It won't work, because the network wasn't designed to allow it.

        • CIR = Confirmed information rate (guaranteed bandwidth)

          Bzzzzzzt.

          CIR = Committed Information Rate

      • Re:I'm a bit torn. (Score:4, Informative)

        by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Monday July 25, 2005 @07:46AM (#13155266) Homepage Journal
        I doubt such an ISP allows reselling of bandwidth. No consumer-grade service allows this in the TOS, a carrier grade connection is required because, as the previous poster noted, you are reselling an oversold connection. A carrier grade connection is a guaranteed bandwidth connection, meaning not oversold.

        A lot of the reason the first ISP in question is expensive is because they have to buy a carrier grade connection and resell that, and it basically cannibalizes their ability to pay for the carrier connection.

        Besides, undercutting the competition using that competition's service, without paying for the rights to do so isn't a fair thing to do, as I noted above, it's actually being parasitic. The fair thing to do would be to buy a proper carrier connection, then resell it.

        • Besides, undercutting the competition using that competition's service, without paying for the rights to do so isn't a fair thing to do, as I noted above, it's actually being parasitic.

          I disagree. What is unfair is selling a service and trying to convince your customers not to compete with you.

    • Well the answer's simple really. If you want to start a business around it, get a commercial-grade connection, and sell off. But if you're only serving to your neighbors and such, I really don't think they'd care very much; it only changes a few bucks they'd be getting otherwise. Just to be safe, you could get a "business-grade" connection and sign your neighbors as employees of your not-for-profit ;).

  • Hacking the Linksys WRT54G (Score:5, Insightful)

    by herve76 ( 200897 ) on Monday July 25, 2005 @05:29AM (#13154791) Homepage
    Remember this previous article:
    http://slashdot.org/articles/04/06/01/0640250.shtm l?tid=126&tid=137&tid=193&tid=215&tid=95 [slashdot.org]

    I think the best way to install a wisp is still with WRT54G.

    Hervé Fulchiron
    Zinside, Provider of Open Source solutions
    http://www.zinside.com/ [zinside.com]
    • You're absolutely right. Forunately, as near as I can tell without trying it on a WRT54G, his scripts should work with little to no modification.

      For instance, WRT54G uses iwconfig, so the grepped output in the scanap script is already perfect.

      I've been doing this sort of WISP analysis for a long time with rrdtool, and can even look at pretty graphs for each client showing how long it's been connected, what sort of throughput it's had, and the quality of the connection over the course of the entire year.
    • While the WRT54G may make an acceptable client to a WISP network, running the WISP off one is asking for problems. For starters they get pretty toasty after a while and the processor can't handle the load of a larger network reliably. If your going to go all out and actually start your own ISP at least use a little common sense and purchase hardware designed for that purpose.
    • I think the best way to install a wisp is still with WRT54G.

      I've tried with this unit and I disagree. The radio is weak. There aren't any store-bought wireless networking units that have a sufficient radio for easy long distance.
      • The radio is weak.

        Um...no? It has a 250mw radio in it, but comes stock running at 50mw. DD-WRT will allow you to set it to run at a more sane strength. My issues are cpu and ram related. And heat.

        If you really want to use wrt54g for this, at least make custom enclosures, provide better heat dissipation, and hack a flash connector onto it for more disk space. Still....not sure that is such a good idea.

    • Re:Hacking the Linksys WRT54G (Score:5, Informative)

      by mikeymckay ( 138669 ) on Monday July 25, 2005 @08:36AM (#13155565) Homepage Journal
      The best way to build a WISP with a WRT54G is using the Freifunk Firmware [freifunk.net] (based on openwrt.org [openwrt.org]) which builds a routed mesh network with any WRT54G flashed with the same firmware. It is really simple and totally open and free - unlike the Sveasoft weenies. Some howtos on my blog:

      How to setup OLSR (a mesh protocol) with Freifunk firmware on a WRT54G [vdomck.org]
      Sharing broadband with a WRT54G [vdomck.org]
      Really simple antennas for the WRT54G [vdomck.org]

  • Cheap wireless gear (a little OT) (Score:5, Informative)

    by sczimme ( 603413 ) on Monday July 25, 2005 @06:12AM (#13154875)

    Starting yesterday (Sunday), Staples is selling the Linksys BEFW11S4 802.11b AP/router (w/ 4-port switch) for $9.94. Linksys 802.11b Cardbus adapters are now $4.94. Please note these items are 802.11b only. (I imagine they are trying to clear out the older gear.) These prices are for in-store purchases only. I picked up a couple of each for spares - in a pinch 802.11b is 802.11better_than_nothing. :-)

    I'm not affiliated with Staples or Linksys except as a customer.
    • If you don't have a home network where you transfer large files(ie movies and 100MB+files) from client to server all the time, chances are there is absolutely no reason to buy anything but 802.11b. Most broadband is 1.5Mb or 3.0Mb and 802.11b will handle that without much problem.
      • If you don't [..] transfer large files [..] all the time, chances are there is absolutely no reason to buy anything but 802.11b

        Do the newer firmwares bring WPA security to 802.11b? Knowing WEP's weaknesses, I never bothered to run it on b. But since switching to g (yes, I move big files all the time), I also gained WPA security and really like it. My SSID is blank in NetStumbler.
        • I inherited a BEFW11S4 from my grandfather (yes I am getting tech hand-me-downs from my grandfather), and it does support WPA. I am not sure if it works out of the box, but with the latest firmware (1.52.02 I think), it works great.
      • I have a Netgear 802.11b router, which on first try gave me 300kbps throughput on wireless (tested at broadbandreports.com), compared to 1.5 Mbps on the wired side (so it's not a CPU limitation.) Partly this is because most of the 4-5 wireless access points I can see from here are all on the same channel. (So I tried to change the channel on the Netgear and found it's a totally cretinous untrustable box with appallingly bad documentation - DHCP doesn't work reliably, etc.)

        I gave up on the thing, and no

  • Since I'm now using windows a lot (because of World of Warcarft) I wonder if there are similar tools for windows. I have trouble with a lot of latency and I suspect that it might be because some other on the net are downloading large amounts of data (as one did admit to me today). I hope that similar tools that run on windows can help me with the problem and let me find out what's causing that high latency. So is there any good wireless tools working on windows similar to these the article mentions?
    • I have trouble with a lot of latency

      Are you sure it's latency and not congestion? Large downloads have little effect on latency.

      If, on the other hand, you're using the $5 word "latency" to describe the $.50 symptom "slow", never mind.

      • I am pretty sure that latency is measured in milliseconds, which is what are very high somertimes. And, I was pretty sure that large downloads had little effect on latency. But I think it is downloaded via Bittorrent or maybe a another p2p client like Kazaa and there might be more information going back and forth with that.

        I usually ping a known server and when the line is ok I get around 30-40 ms. When the line is not ok I get more than 4 seconds in respons. What else is this than latency?
        • I usually ping a known server and when the line is ok I get around 30-40 ms. When the line is not ok I get more than 4 seconds in respons. What else is this than latency?

          Congestion.

          Latency is observed when intermediate nodes on the network add delay due to inherent processing demands in each device that are not related to the amount of traffic, i.e., how much time it takes to process one message. Congestion is caused when the intermediate nodes have to wait to even begin their processing due to the amoun

    • In case you don't know/are interested, you can run World of Warcraft on Linux using Cedega [transgaming.com].

  • wifidog + wrt54g (Score:5, Interesting)

    by millette ( 56354 ) <robin@NOSPam.millette.info> on Monday July 25, 2005 @06:43AM (#13154939) Homepage Journal
    You can install wifidog [ilesansfil.org], nocat's successor if I may call it that on top of openwrt and voilà, instant gratification. You won't become an ISP, but your users will never know the difference ;) In case you're wondering, openwrt is a replacement firmware for the wrt54g series of routers. It's a small gnu/linux distribution that does its job quite well.
  • www.locustworld.com ... the basic software is free.

  • Alternatively use Less (Score:2, Informative)

    by smoker2 ( 750216 )
    Less Networks [lessnetworks.com] have a bootable cd that serves as a wi-fi hotspot server, which takes care of virtually all the hassle. If you are not going to be charging for access, then it's ideal. Forces a re-login every so often IIRC. Runs fine on a P2 with 128Mb RAM. You do need 2 nics (one in, one out) and an access point of course.

  • Wifi Software (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Hellboy0101 ( 680494 )
    Using a commodity PC, and the software provided free by ZoneCD http://www.publicip.net/ [publicip.net], I was able to setup a public Wifi Hotspot in about 30 minutes. Super easy, and gives you granular access levels to grant people different types of access (i.e. Super User, Average Joe, etc.). You can track user logins, and other usage stats via a webpage as well. It sure pissed off my wife to have to log in everytime though!
    • hell, you're just lucky she didn't go over and let the magic smoke out of the thing. Making her log in evertime... sheesh, man, she's your wife.

      Oh, wait this is slashdot... and you said your wife....

      / **head asploding**
  • Check out Metrix Communication [metrix.net] for an updated version of Pebble Linux that includes all the latest tools and drivers plus a shiny new GPL Web GUI [metrix.net].

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