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Setting up an Ubuntu Wired/Wirless Router

TableOfContents

Preface

This article exists due a lack of concise information and easily followed instructions on the subject of setting up an wired and/or wireless Ubuntu router. It is intended for advanced users who have or would like to set up a dedicated Ubuntu installation acting as a router at home or in their office. The end result is a powerful router that can provide functionality similar to popular products (for example, the Linksys WRT54G).

Prerequisites

Broadband Connection

A broadband connection like a cable or DSL modem is required. Your broadband service provider must either provide the necessary information to configure your IP address statically or provide a dynamically assigned address via DHCP. If your connection requires PPPoE (as can often be the case with DSL service), you'll find the existing the article ["ADSLPPPoE"] may be of value.

Router Hardware

You'll need a dedicated computer to act as the router. The computer can use old hardware and having the minimum requirements to install Ubuntu should suffice. The author of this article runs his router on a P3 600mhz processor with 256MB of RAM. You are encouraged use this as a server for other applications perhaps by installing postfix, apache, mysql, and/or samba. This guide recommends a server installation of Ubuntu, but there's no reason why a desktop installation wouldn't work. If you plan to be able to access the router remotely, install ssh before proceeding.

The following needs to be physically installed and recognized by the kernel on your router:

• A network adapter connected to the broadband cable or DSL modem

• For a wired network,

  • Another network adapter connected to a hub or switch

• For a wireless network,

  • A wireless network adapter (which must be able to be set in "master" mode)

    • If your wireless network adapter is not recognized by your server installation of Ubuntu, it may use the madwifi chipset (like the D-Link DWL-G520). Please visit ["Router/Madwifi"] for more information.

• For both a wired and wireless network,

  • All of the above

Setting Up Your Network Interfaces

Device Naming Overview

• eth0: network adapter connected to the WAN (Wide Area Network: your broadband connection)

• eth1: network adapter connected to a hub or switch connected to one or more computers wanting to access the internet

• wlan0: wireless network adapter

It is important to note that the names of the network devices above (eth0, eth1, and wlan0) are used as convention. It is very likely that your router will recognize its devices under different names (for example madwifi calls its wireless device ath0). Please substitute the names of your device accordingly. For information about how to change the names of your network devices, try man iftab.

Network Layout