RPi access point

The 3B doesn't have any way near Gigabyte Ethernet

This may be of some help, if you want to bridge Wifi to Ethernet

I am not sure that it is easy to run wifi in client and 'server' mode together at all. For sure you can do either separately.

It doesn't matter really does it? neither will the wifi. It will allegedly do 300Mbps, which is better than 100Mbps ethernet...

It would depend on how many client devices connect, and what they want to use...

The LAN is; giga router, giga switch and other ethernet devices on the LAN.

The Pi 3B would not make a good access point, it only has 100Mbit Ethernet at 2.4GHz WiFi. The 3B+ can do 300Mbit/s with Gigabit Ethernet, and has 2.4 and 5 GHz Wifi, but is still not as good as a dedicated access point.

If you also have to get a USB dongle for the Pi, then you might as well just get another proper access point which will have better WiFi range and performance, and doesn't require a whole lot of configuration.

---druck

Normally, there is very little wifi 'load'. The desirability of an AP is because of logistics. The wifi/ethernet router is buried in a location disadvantageous to wifi, but extremely advantageous and *necessary* for the ethernet distribution. The house is big. 'Moving' the AP from its buried router location to a more open position would improve the signal thru'out the house.

Under 'normal' operation, the wifi device in the kitchen in off, the wifi device in the LR is off, and the wifi device in a bedroom is only streaming audio while I'm in bed.

Normally the location of the RPi is at a seat about 10' from the wifi router, and normally the one ethernet connxn 'nearby' the RPi is being used by another device, a VoIP, so the RPi just uses its wifi for connectivity out of convenience.

During this 'research' I've brought another ethernet connection from a switch 'across the floor' over to the RPi. Whenever I'm willing to sacrifice the most convenient connectivity of the Pi, I can give it AP functionality not headless for testing, but I've been putting that off until I'm almost ready to move it to the AP position for headless operation.

I see.

Shopping around, it looks like I can get a pretty good AP for about $40.

Gigabit on the ethernet side and 802.11ac on the wifi, and one I see has

Lots of the low end are 10/100 on the ethernet and not 'ac' on the wifi.

I'm modifying my original idea of deploying the RPi as a 'real' AP; but I'm going to continue my 'quest' in the 'direction' of doing that, because I've figured a strategy to allow me to go in the direction I started toward the Pi as an AP first w/ conventional peripherals, then headless.

I can do it using a spare SD.

I'll start w/ my current RPi Raspbian install, then I'll modify it as the tutorial instructed to make it a conventionally configured peripherally access point by using the combination of temporary ethernet and the native Pi wifi w/ RealVNC server on the Pi and Tiger viewer on another LAN device LM live.

Then I'll see if I can use the conventional peripheral Pi as an AP for a wifi device, probably a chromebook (past EOL). Then I'll 'bypass' the Pi's connected peripherals and do it headlessly, for the 'conclusion' of the project. I can use a different SD to bring the Pi back to the normal peripherals and wifi connectivity.

That is, I've decided the original idea isn't so good, but I want to see it work.

So does gigabit Ethernet

I just bought one of these.

It's possible for it to operate as an AP and as a Station at the same time but I think both funtions have to operate on the same channel. i.e. both are on channel 1 not AP on channel1 and station on channel9

A got a guy in to run Ethernet cabling between my office as a central point (where the switch and main computer gear are located) and various strategic points around the house, including the living room and master bedroom.

That references old commands like “brctl” and “ifconfig”. One of those I don’t even have installed on the system which provides my wi-fi access point.

Here’s the relevant part of /etc/network/interfaces on that machine (“enp3s0” and “wlp5s0” are the wired and wireless interfaces being bridged):

auto br0 iface br0 inet static pre-up ip link add name br0 type bridge pre-up ip link set dev br0 up post-up ip link set dev enp3s0 master br0 post-up iw dev wlp5s0 set 4addr on post-up ip link set dev wlp5s0 master br0 post-up ip link set dev enp3s0 up post-up ip link set dev wlp5s0 up address ... netmask ... network ... broadcast ... gateway ... bridge_ports wlp5s0 enp3s0 bridge_fd 0

The additional bridge-specific options are documented here

The scheme didn't work for me. My guess is because part of the configuration instructions didn't have the right entry for the wifi driver, but I didn't figure that out until later.

The proper driver is mmc_bcm2835, but the instructions I followed said;

driver=nl80211

If I ever choose to go back to test if the other driver would work, I still have that SD; it was an earlier Raspbian, so I just replaced the SD w/ a newer.

The Raspberry Pi is great general purpose machine, and if you were to be stranded on a desert island (i.e. somewhere without Amazon delivery), and a container load of the Pi's and peripherals washed up, you could make them do just about anything.

However, if you are somewhere where a delivery driver can chuck stuff over your back gate, and are after a specific single function bit of tech such as an access point (or security camera came up recently), dedicated hardware has both cost and performance advantages.

Although I do like see if the Pi will do things just in case of desert islands!

---druck

Sure, an off-the-shelf product may do 90% of what you want. But it will never quite be 100% of what you want.

That’s where roll-your-own comes in. Think of a Raspberry Pi with Linux as being like modelling clay, both hardware and software, that you can mould to whatever shape you want.