Free wireless routers software for linux

The Linux Wireless Extension and the Wireless Tools are an Open Source project sponsored by Hewlett Packard (through my contribution) since 1996, and build with the contribution of many Linux users all over the world.

The Wireless Extension (WE) is a generic API allowing a driver to expose to the user space configuration and statistics specific to common Wireless LANs. The beauty of it is that a single set of tool can support all the variations of Wireless LANs, regardless of their type (as long as the driver support Wireless Extension).

Another advantage is these parameters may be changed on the fly without restarting the driver (or Linux).

The Wireless Tools (WT) is a set of tools allowing to manipulate the Wireless Extensions. They use a textual interface and are rather crude, but aim to support the full Wireless Extension. There are many other tools you can use with Wireless Extensions, however Wireless Tools is the reference implementation.

iwconfig manipulate the basic wireless parameters
iwlist allow to initiate scanning and list frequencies, bit-rates, encryption keys...
iwspy allow to get per node link quality
iwpriv allow to manipulate the Wireless Extensions specific to a driver (private)
ifrename allow to name interfaces based on various static criteria

Most Linux distributions also have integrated Wireless Extensions support in their networking initialisation scripts, for easier boot-time configuration of wireless interfaces. They also include Wireless Tools as part of their standard packages.
Wireless configuration can also be done using the Hotplug scripts and distribution specific support, this enable the proper support of any removable wireless interface (Pcmcia, CardBus, USB...).

Any versions of the Pcmcia package offer the possibility to do wireless configuration of Pcmcia and Cardbus card through thefile wireless.opts. This allow to fully integrate wireless settings in the Pcmcia scheme mechansism. However, this method is now deprecated in favor of distribution specific methods.

Please note that the Wireless Tools (starting with version 19) supports fully IEEE 802.11 parameters and devices, support older style of devices and most proprietary protocols, and are prepared to handle HiperLan as well. More recent versions of course adds more 802.11 support.

But, unfortunately not all drivers support all these features...

SIP Express Router (ser) is a high-performance, configurable, free SIP ( RFC3261 ) server .
SER features an application-server interface, presence support, SMS gateway, SIMPLE2Jabber gateway, RADIUS/syslog accounting and authorization, server status monitoring, FCP security, etc. Web-based user provisioning, serweb, available.
Its performance allows it to deal with operational burdens, such as broken network components, attacks, power-up reboots and rapidly growing user population.
SERs configuration ability meets needs of a whole range of scenarios including small-office use, enterprise PBX replacements and carrier services.
Main features:
- accounting
- digest authentication
- CPL scripts
- ENUM support
- instant messaging
- MySQL support
- PostgreSQL support
- a presence agent
- Radius authentication and accounting
- Diameter authentication
- record routing
- SMS gateway
- Jabber gateway
- NAT traversal support transaction module
- registrar
- user location
SER has been extensively and successfuly tested with many SIP products from other vendors (Microsoft, Cisco, Mitel, snom, Pingtel, Siemens, and many others). It has been powering our SIP services continuously for more than two years.

Wireless Applet is a gnome-panel applet that shows up the status of your wireless card.

This applet used to be in the default Gnome releases before it was replaced around v2.10 or so. Some users prefer it over the new one, so we decided to post it here for easy access to it.

This is a small application allowing you to scan for wireless networks and connect to them.
Wireless Assistant uses wireless-tools as its backend, so they need to be installed.
All feedback as well as hints and good advice are appreciated!
Installation:
make -f Makefile.cvs
./configure
make
su -c "make install"
Enhancements:
- NOTE: This release includes some brand new or rewritten features. Please submit bugs to sf.net page and comments/votes here. Thanks!
- NEW: Finally WPA-PSK support (WPA/WPA2, please test and report in case of problems!)
- NEW/FIX: Rewritten, completely new connection state detection (please comment!)
- NEW: Optional grouping of APs with the same ESSID
- FIX: UI refinements
- FIX: hide encryption keys in console output and edit dialogs
- FIX: Connection using dhclient fails
- FIX: dont check for connection while wizard is running
- FIX: remove default gateway upon disconnection if not managed by DHCP client
- FIX: updated Polish translation (with help from riklaunim)
- FIX: Many internal changes, more stable

wireless-applet is an GNOME Panel applet displaying available wireless networks with the ability to add a listed network to the system configuration easily.

Brings the comfort of NetworkManager to wpa_supplicant users. Supports WEP, WPA-PSK, and open wireless networks.

Ad-hoc Wireless Distribution Service (AWDS) is a Layer 2 routing protocol for wireless mesh networks. The project provides transparent Ethernet-like access to all participating nodes, thus easily allowing the employment of different higher level protocols like IP (with DHCP), IPv6, AppleTalk, ...

A Linux implementation of AWDS can be downloaded from our download section. Ports to other platforms are highly appreciated!

Linux LiveCD Router project allows you to share and firewall your broadband connection and use WIFI.
You can use DSL, ADSL, Cable Modem, T1, Fixed IPs, Dial-Up, WIFI, build you own Access Point and more.
Main features:
- Share and Firewall your broadband or dedicated Internet connection
- Includes Firewall Shorewall and Masquerading (NAT)
- Does not require any installation. It is a LiveCD, your computer simply boots straight from the CD. Does not require a hard disk
- Supports DSL, Cablemodem, Fixed IP and Dial-Up
- Traffic Control, QoS
- DHCP Client and Server
- Remote SSH administration
- Includes DNS Cache to accelerate surfing
- Includes SNMP Monitoring, MRTG graphical statistics
- Use standard and low cost computer, networking and wifi hardware (also USB)
- Can use multiple ethernet and wifi 802.11a/b/g cards. Supports PCI, USB and PCMCIA cards (can replace external Access Points!)
- Linux Software compatible with Windows and Mac Networks

IP accounter application measures and graphs traffic for IPv4 and IPv6 netfilter-based routers. Input data is accounted using several abstraction layers (routers, hosts, flows), and IPv6 traffic accounting may be mixed with IPv4.
Enhancements:
- The WEB frontend is still unavailable. There were some minor dificulties running ipaccounter. Still the main issue is when mysql server crashes. The traffic info is then lost until someone fixes it. Therefore it is advised to use some net watching software like Nagios. For further feature enchancements see the ChangeLog. 2006-09-02 by Ondra Ipaccounter-1.0 was released. Only WEB frontend is unavailable at the moment. The accounter is run on one machine. Namely maximus.spi-net.org. There were no fault ancountered so far, but its running only for one week.