Looking for a WAP Linux distribution and nic

[Keljian]

Hey all,

I am looking to consolidate my WAP into my esxi box, and wondering which distribution to go with. It needs to have basic WPA2, a MAC filter, and support reasonably fast 802.11ac but aside from that it really doesn't need much.

Any recommendations?

 

[whitey]

I would venture to guess that unless you intend to vt-D passthru a PCI wifi nic (if ESXi even supports this, they may, I've only done nics/hba's w/ vt-D and vSphere) to your Linux OS then you may be onto something. YEARS ago (10+) I used to be pretty deep into wifi hacking and made plenty a AP-mode (monitor mode) 'roll-your-own' Linux based AP's. Been too long since I have done it to suggest exact HW/distro's but I was able to find a slew of info on 'the net' 10+ years ago covering this topic (almost and overwhelming amt of info) so your best bet is back there.

Here LMGTFY hah j/k bud, good luck!

If it helps I was using orinoco/prism2/atheros based chipsets and I think there is dang good support for atheros to this day, trick it to ensure you get one that supports that lower level raw monitor mode that enables you to take radio in/out of AP mode.

 

[Keljian]

Happy to go with a passthrough situation..

 

[RTM]

I suppose you can use OpenWRT.
They even provide KVM images, which you can probably convert to something that is supported by ESXi.

 

[Keljian]

I suppose you can use OpenWRT.
They even provide KVM images, which you can probably convert to something that is supported by ESXi.

Thanks!!

 

[RobertFontaine]

KVM images for openwrt... who'ld a thunk it... I'm definitely googling this one.