My system’s configuration:
– Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin
– TP-Link TL-WN722n USB WiFi Dongle
TO DO:
– Slow network performance, getting only 3-10Mbit/s
– With N-Mode activated, connection drops after a while
Sources:
– http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,6300
–
Steps:
1. Network configuration
First edit /etc/network/interfaces
, remove anything related to wlan0
(or whatever your device’s name) and add this lines to set the IP address of the wlan
device as static:
auto wlan0 iface wlan0 inet static address 10.0.0.1 network 10.0.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 10.0.0.255
Although the configuration is already set, but in my system somehow it fails to set the IP address. So to make sure the setting will work, add ifup wlan0
inside /etc/rc.local
file just before the exit 0
:
#!/bin/sh -e # # rc.local ... ifup wlan0 exit 0
2. hostapd installation
hostapd
is the daemon who is responsible for broadcasting the access point and managing the connections. Rather than using hostapd
package provided by Ubuntu repository, I would prefer to get the latest revision of hostapd
from the developer’s git, then compile it manually. I do this because I want to enable the WiFi N-mode support.
But, installation from source will only give hostapd
binaries, while we need several config files to run hostapd automatically as a service. I am no linux/Debian expert so I will just install hostapd from the repository, just to get the service configuration at /etc/default/
, /etc/init.d/
, and other places, then uninstall or remove the hostapd
binaries.
git clone git://w1.fi/srv/git/hostap.git cd hostap/hostapd
Then inside this folder, copy the defconfig
file into a new file named .config
, then open it using your favorite editor. For my setup I only need to activate (by uncommenting) the nl80211 driver and the N-Mode:
... CONFIG_DRIVER_NL80211=y ... CONFIG_IEEE80211N=y
Before installing hostapd, we need to install some dependencies:
sudo apt-get install libnl1 libnl1-dev
Then after that, compile and install hostapd:
make sudo make install
The resulting binaries are hostapd
and hostapd_cli
located by default at /usr/local/bin/
.
Now we can do a test run. Edit the config file /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
:
interface=wlan0 ssid=MyAccessPoint hw_mode=g channel=6 auth_algs=1 # to enable N-Mode # UPDATE: N-Mode is still problematic #ieee80211n=1 #wmm_enabled=1 # config for WPA security macaddr_acl=0 ignore_broadcast_ssid=0 wpa=2 wpa_passphrase=MyPassphrase123 wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK wpa_pairwise=TKIP rsn_pairwise=CCMP
Make sure you don’t have trailing whitespaces, because hostapd
is very sensitive. Now run hostapd
:
sudo hostapd -dd /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
If nl80211
driver fails to start, quite possibly because NetworkManager is still managing the wireless network. Turn off the wlan management from NetworkManager by doing this on terminal (ref.):
sudo nmcli nm wifi off sudo rfkill unblock wlan
If no problem exist, the output would be somehow like this:
random: Trying to read entropy from /dev/random Configuration file: /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf nl80211: interface wlan0 in phy phy0 rfkill: initial event: idx=0 type=1 op=0 soft=0 hard=0 nl80211: Using driver-based off-channel TX nl80211: Add own interface ifindex 4 nl80211: Set mode ifindex 4 iftype 3 (AP) nl80211: Setup AP - device_ap_sme=0 use_monitor=1 nl80211: Create interface iftype 6 (MONITOR) nl80211: New interface mon.wlan0 created: ifindex=7 nl80211: Add own interface ifindex 7 BSS count 1, BSSID mask 00:00:00:00:00:00 (0 bits) nl80211: Regulatory information - country=CN nl80211: 2402-2482 @ 40 MHz nl80211: 5735-5835 @ 40 MHz nl80211: Added 802.11b mode based on 802.11g information Allowed channel: mode=1 chan=1 freq=2412 MHz max_tx_power=20 dBm Allowed channel: mode=1 chan=2 freq=2417 MHz max_tx_power=20 dBm Allowed channel: mode=1 chan=3 freq=2422 MHz max_tx_power=20 dBm Allowed channel: mode=1 chan=4 freq=2427 MHz max_tx_power=20 dBm Allowed channel: mode=1 chan=5 freq=2432 MHz max_tx_power=20 dBm Allowed channel: mode=1 chan=6 freq=2437 MHz max_tx_power=20 dBm Allowed channel: mode=1 chan=7 freq=2442 MHz max_tx_power=20 dBm Allowed channel: mode=1 chan=8 freq=2447 MHz max_tx_power=20 dBm .... nl80211: ifindex=4 nl80211: beacon_int=100 nl80211: dtim_period=2 nl80211: ssid - hexdump_ascii(len=8): 59 6f 75 42 6f 74 41 50 MyAccessPoint nl80211: hidden SSID not in use nl80211: privacy=1 nl80211: auth_algs=0x1 nl80211: wpa_version=0x2 nl80211: key_mgmt_suites=0x2 nl80211: pairwise_ciphers=0x10 nl80211: group_cipher=0x10 wlan0: Event RX_MGMT (20) received wlan0: Event TX_STATUS (18) received wlan0: Event RX_MGMT (20) received wlan0: Event RX_MGMT (20) received wlan0: Event TX_STATUS (18) received wlan0: Event RX_MGMT (20) received wlan0: Event RX_MGMT (20) received wlan0: Event TX_STATUS (18) received wlan0: Event TX_STATUS (18) received wlan0: Event RX_MGMT (20) received wlan0: Event RX_MGMT (20) received wlan0: Event RX_MGMT (20) received wlan0: Event RX_MGMT (20) received wlan0: Event RX_MGMT (20) received wlan0: Event RX_MGMT (20) received
This lines
wlan0: Event TX_STATUS (18) received wlan0: Event TX_STATUS (18) received wlan0: Event RX_MGMT (20) received wlan0: Event RX_MGMT (20) received
Will show up when another PC/client is probing or scanning our Access Point. This is a good sign. Now quit the test run by pressing Ctrl-C
The next step to configure the Ubuntu services so hostapd could start automatically upon booting. First, edit /etc/init.d/hostapd
file, and make sure the variables are correct:
... DAEMON_SBIN=/usr/local/bin/hostapd DAEMON_CONF=/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf ...
Second, edit /etc/default/hostapd
... RUN_DAEMON="yes" DAEMON_CONF="/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf"; DAEMON_OPTS="-dd -t"; ...
And now we can manage the hostapd through Ubuntu’s service, and it will run automatically upon booting.
sudo service hostapd restart
For more information about managing the service, this could be a good reading.
3. DHCP and DNS
For DHCP purpose we are going to use dnsmasq
because of the simplicity of configuration. Please note that dnsmasq
might be not suitable for big network.
But one thing worth noting is that Ubuntu 12.04 (Network-Manager) is using dnsmasq
as DNS resolver. We have to disable it so we can use dnsmasq as our DHCP and “DNS” server. To do this, edit /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf
file and put a #
(comment sign) in front of dns=dnsmasq
so it will look like this:
... #dns=dnsmasq ...
For more information about this, check this out.
Now we can configure dnsmasq
to fit our need
sudo apt-get -y install dnsmasq
It will create default complete config file /etc/dnsmasq.conf
, which is very useful for reference. For the sake of readability let’s just rename that file and make a new empty config file:
cd /etc/ sudo mv dnsmasq.conf dnsmasq.conf.orig sudo touch dnsmasq.conf
Then edit the newly created file, and fill that with this basic configuration:
interface=wlan0 expand-hosts domain=local dhcp-range=10.0.0.10,10.0.0.20,24h dhcp-option=3,10.0.0.1
Now we’re done. Restart the server/PC and make sure everything works. We can check the log at /var/log/syslog
anytime to see our DHCP server in action.
Sometimes I got problem that dnsmasq is not running automatically upon booting, this could be because the runlevel of dnsmasq is called before the networking devices are up. The easiest hack is to put the service restart command in the /etc/rc.local
:
#!/bin/sh -e # # rc.local ... ifup wlan0 sleep 5 service dnsmasq restart exit 0