G'day Rod, On Thursday 13 October 2011 22:14:14 Rod Butcher wrote: > My budget for this is tiny, $100 max for the whole setup, as it's > only for training, and I don't want to acquire hardware I will have > no use for afterward... > So I'm trying to get specific info on whether it is possible to > configure a Linux PC with a cheap 80211g/n PCI card to provide a > reasonably full-featured WAP - user/computer credential validation, > data encryption, network and Internet access. Yes, this can be done. Depends on your 802.11g/n PCI card -- I have used PCI cards with Atheros AR5000 series chipsets as access points. Other cards may be usable - depends on the capability of the chipset and kernel support.
> It's fairly simple to configure multiple Ethernet network cards on a > Linux box to provide routing and Internet access (iptables & NAT)... > I had assumed a similar software solution should be possible for > wifi-based LAN. ?? Have you tried any of the Linux distros designed for this? Endian, Smoothwall, IPCop would seem to be candidates. I assume that you have some suitable hardware to try one/some of these distros. I suggest something with a Celleron 500MHz processor (or better), 256MB (or more) of memory and at least 4GB of HDD. While these purpose-built distros will run on much lower-spec hardware, the learning experience will suffer. HTH Glen -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
