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eom.dev

Member

Registered: 2022-02-11

Posts: 57

software access point with hostapd using simultaneous station/ap

I would like my hypervisor to extend its wifi connection to virtual machines over a bridge so that those machines are assigned IP addresses by the router's DHCP.  The wiki describes how to create an access point and wireless client with a single device, and how to do a brige network for that AP.  I've configured systemd-networkd to use DHCP on wlan0, wlan0_ap, and the bridge, and iwd to connect to the external network; however, on boot only wlan0 actually gets a DHCP assigned IP (wlan0_ap, the bridge, and any virtual machines using DHCP do not).

I'm not sure if what I am trying to do is actually possible.  Is NAT an essential part of creating an access point, or am I configuring things improperly? Using a single wireless card as both the station and access point connected to a bridge, will bridged machines be visible on the external network?

progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,318

Re: software access point with hostapd using simultaneous station/ap

Creating a wifi AP on your hypervisor is unncessary, as that is not used for connections in the vm.

Many wifi routers will not accept routed/bridged traffic from wifi clients. Only packets with the MAC address of the authenticated client is allowed. Some might allow multiple ip addresses for that single client, but normally it should be limited to one I guess.
So you probably need a NAT. Maybe some type of ipvlan could work, but I have no idea if that would be possilble with dhcp.

Last edited by progandy (2022-09-17 16:48:14)

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