hostapd with two separate interfaces and APs on a single machine?

[David Wetzel]

Hi,

is somebody running a hostapd with two separate interfaces and APs on a single machine?
If yes, how reliable is that?
Or is it better to run two hostapd instances?

Thanks!

David

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[Petar Bogdanovic]

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 08:19:14AM -0400, David Wetzel wrote:
>
> is somebody running a hostapd with two separate interfaces and APs on
> a single machine? If yes, how reliable is that?

Some time ago, I tried running two mini-pci ath cards on a wrap board
and had no luck at all. At the beginning it looked good but as soon as
one interface started transmitting lots of data, the other interface
went deaf/mute.

I never found out why this happened. Interference, insufficiently
dimensioned power supply, faulty board.. without some serious skills in
electrical engineering and proper equipment there was not much left for
me to do. Both cards were operating on different bands (2.4 vs. 5.8GHz).

As far as I remember, I tried NetBSD, FreeBSD, Linux and they all
behaved similarly.

> Or is it better to run two hostapd instances?

You can do that without VAPs?

Petar Bogdanovic

[David Wetzel]

Hi folks,

it seems to work...

No idea why I had to use hostapd_flags once and command_args on the other file but this made it work.
I wish a newer NetBSD version would support multiple APs out of the box.

cat /etc/rc.d/hostapd
#!/bin/sh
#
# $NetBSD: hostapd,v 1.3 2006/06/02 01:06:16 rpaulo Exp $
#

# PROVIDE: hostapd
# REQUIRE: mountcritremote beforemountlkm
$_rc_subr_loaded . /etc/rc.subr

name="hostapd"
rcvar=$name
load_rc_config $name

command="/usr/sbin/hostapd"
required_files="/etc/hostapd.conf"

pidfile="/var/run/$name.pid"
hostapd_flags="-B -P /var/run/$name.pid $required_files"

run_rc_command "$1"

------------------------------------------

cat /etc/rc.d/hostapdalfred
#!/bin/sh
#
# $NetBSD: hostapd,v 1.3 2006/06/02 01:06:16 rpaulo Exp $
#

# PROVIDE: hostapdalfred
# REQUIRE: mountcritremote beforemountlkm
# -P
$_rc_subr_loaded . /etc/rc.subr

name="hostapdalfred"
rcvar=$name
command="/usr/sbin/hostapd"
required_files="/etc/hostapdalfred.conf"
pidfile="/var/run/$name.pid"
command_args="-B -P /var/run/$name.pid $required_files"

load_rc_config $name
run_rc_command "$1"