OT: What we want are things that work; what we get is technology

[bene-Gk2boCrsRs1AfugRpC6u6w at public.gmane.org (Ben Eisenbraun)]

On Mon, Mar 08, 2010 at 04:07:07PM -0500, Dan Ritter wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 08, 2010 at 03:50:25PM -0500, David Kramer wrote:
> > Huh.  I don't know why that didn't occur to me.  My server is already
> > running 24/7, and I could have used firestarter to set up another
> > intranet.  Anyone know what software I would have to use to set up a
> > wireless network card as an access point?
> 
> A DHCP daemon, mostly, and a little routing configuration.

...and a netfilter/iptables set up up to sling the packets around.  Once
you've gotten that far, you might as well add a local DNS cache and maybe a
transparent Squid proxy.  And then you decide you should really be
prioritizing TCP ACKs so uploads don't tank your connection, and while
you're at it you can create a higher priority queue for DNS queries and SSH
connections, so interactive remote shells don't feel laggy when everyone in
the house is using the network.

And, hey, some graphs of network usage, wireless SNR, system resources,
etc, would be kinda cool, so you set that up, and before you know it, you
have completely duplicated the efforts of the OpenWRT/pfsense/m0n0wall/
Tomato firmware projects.  :-)

It's a really good learning experience though.  If you're not doing it at
work, then there's no better way to learn your firewalling software than to
break your config and have irritated housemates/spouse/children breathing
down your neck to fix it.  

-ben

--
success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiam.
                                              <sir winston churchill>