Note that the following variables, which you can edit later on to suit your particular network, need to be added line by line, with no spaces at the beginning of lines.

Hostapd doesn’t come with a default configuration file, so start editing one with ' sudo nano /etc/hostapd/nf'. With network routing cemented and local IP addresses ready to be dished out, it’s time to deal with the more difficult part: wireless authentication. While there’s a raft of potential options listed in dnsmasq’s manpage, it’s not worth exploring them until you’re confident everything works as it should. Quit nano and save, and that’s really all you need to do to get dnsmasq set up.

In order, this tells dnsmasq the start and end of the IP address range to allocate (you can tweak this), the subnet mask (leave this alone), and the lease time, in hours, to give to connected devices. On the next line, add our definition of what dnsmasq is expected to provide: Rename the one that’s there with ' sudo mv /etc/nf /etc/', then use ' sudo nano /etc/nf' to start editing a blank replacement. We need to tell dnsmasq a few things about the access point we’re trying to set up, but our limited network doesn’t need half of the information that’s found in its default configuration file. Quit nano with Ctrl-X, answer yes to saving the file, then run ' sudo service dhcpcd' restart to put your new configuration in action.

We’re using a different subnet (represented by the third digit, in this case 123, though you can set this to any valid value), but bridging-and using your router’s existing DHCP and DNS features-is entirely possible if you install bridge-utils and use ' man bridge-utils' to check out its manual. This will fix your Wi-Fi address in place (see image below). Run ' sudo nano /etc/ nf' to open up the configuration file for the Pi’s DHCP client, and head to the bottom of the file. By default, these should be wlan0 and eth0, but if they’re not, you’ll need to replace them in the following steps to match your own configuration. Type ' ifconfig -a -s' into your terminal, and note down your network device names. Check a couple of things before we move on, because your results may differ.

Build a router using raspberry pi