Re: Raspberry Pi as wireless AP, with pluggable usb modem

[Jason Mitchell <jar%bigjar.com@localhost>]

Hello,

You need to run hostapd (included in NetBSD) to do WPA-PSK and dhcpcd to assign ip addresses. Also, there's a flag in ifconfig to put the wlan in AP mode. This link is old but seems to cover what you need to do to set up an AP under NetBSD:

https://mrrooster.tumblr.com/post/62694672/netbsd-wpa-wireless-ap

I think I'd set up the phone tether first because that might be problematic as you're dealing with external hardware. The wireless AP stuff looks straightforward (unless the WLAN Pi 3b driver doesn't support AP mode). You can test that by running the ifconfig command (from the link) and try to get the AP working with no encryption first. If those two things work check out then this can definitely be done.

But I don't know how to get NetBSD to use any phone that's plugged in to tether automatically. Some phones might still appear as a serial connection whereas others could use RNDIS (I don't know about getting that to work on NetBSD).

HTH,

Jason M.

On Jan 2, 2022, at 11:27 AM, Mayuresh <mayuresh%acm.org@localhost> wrote:

Is it possible to set up RPI (3B) as a WiFi AP and use a USB device (a
modem or USB tethered phone) to connect to the internet?

A different USB device may be used at different times, so the interface
may vary (or may sometimes be absent). Ideally it should not require
manually running a command depending on the device plugged.

If feasible, please help with more pointers or information.