Turn a Raspberry Pi Into a Wireless Router

Turn a Raspberry Pi Into a Wireless Router

If you own a Raspberry Pi and want to establish either a home network or a guest network, then you can turn your Pi into a wireless router by following simple steps. You could also use this to create a hotspot for other people instead of having to give away your network’s password. This basically allows you to let other people access the WiFi and even have a separate network that runs similarly like a guest network. Things you’ll be needing are;

• A Raspberry Pi since it has an Ethernet port and a built in WiFi connection.
• A power supply for it
• An SD card
• An Ethernet cable

You need Ethernet access in order to supply internet to the Raspberry Pi and since it has a built in port, you can easily convert it into a wireless router. You can not only convert the Pi into a hotspot, but can also transform it into a WiFi repeater in order to increase the range of your WiFi. Firstly, you’ll need to install Raspbian on your Pi. The lite version is preferred and can be found online. After which, you will need to plug it into your internet router using the cable and then login into the Raspberry’s terminal or the main configuration page/IP. You will need to run the following command;

• sudo cp /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf.sav sudo cp /dev/null/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Edit in the file “/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf” and add the following lines:

• ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev update_config=1

Now, you will need a software in order to turn the Raspberry Pi into an access point. Use the RaspAP to manage your WiFi hotspot via web interface. You will need to install extra software mainly including “hostapd” which will essentially help convert the Pi into an access point that other devices can connect to and will also handle security such as setting up a password. Then add the following command;

• wget -q https://git.io/voEUQ -O /tmp/raspap && bash /tmp/raspap

After this, the Raspberry will restart. You will be able to see it on available networks. However, in case the network does not appear, find the IP of the raspberry pi, and connect to it via your web browser. Go the Configure Hotspot section and change the network to be visible. By connecting to the configuration page of your raspberry, you can change the network name, password and other things.

To avoid having to configure NAT every time the Raspberry Pi reboots you can do the following;

• sudo sh -c “iptables-save > /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat”

Then add the following to the end of the file “/etc/network/interfaces” to restore the configuration when the network interface comes up;

• up iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat

Finally, reboot and make sure it works the way you want it to and check whether devices can connect to it or not. This way you can not only utilize the Raspberry but can have a fully working home router as well.