AWLP – (Alptekin’s Wireless Linux Project) is an open-source wireless software project that turns a Slackware Linux machine into a dedicated web-managed wireless access gateway. It has pretty much all the features you would expect from an off-the-shelf wireless access gateway. Description, detailed installation instructions, screenshots and downloadable source tarballs can be found at http://awlp.sourceforge.net
I couldn’t find the feature on the website.
My MSc project last year was approximately on the same subject except wireless networks security was the strongest concern of it (with community networks in mind). Since this solution is strongly software based, why not use IPsec for real security possibilities ? I only tested the linux 2.6 implementation against a linux and an OSX client, but it is reported to work as well with windows XP… I know this has drawbacks, but if you want good privacy, this is really a good solution.
MikroTik (www.mikrotik.com) does all of this, and alot more (including security) with their “Router Software” (the WAG part is called “HotSpot”). It’s very cheap ($40-100), and they have good support. Not saying anything bad about this article’s project, just offering another option.
Altough it would be cool to toy around with, what’s the point? I wouldn’t want a PC or server sitting there taking up power and space and I can get a linksys or cisco WAP to sit there and do the same thing.
As the man says you can tinker with it and
add features to it. A wireless access point
that was also a print server and fax receiver
(for starters) would be handy.
Might not suit you but may well be the template
that encourages others to do more creative things.
A