WPA access point

WPA/WPA2 support in the QNX Neutrino RTOS is provided by the hostapd daemon.

This daemon is the access point counterpart to the client side wpa_supplicant daemon. This daemon manages your wireless network adapter when in access point mode. The hostapd configuration is defined in the /etc/hostapd.conf configuration file.

Before you start the hostapd process, you must put the network adapter into host access point mode:

ifconfig abc0 mediaopt hostap

You will also likely need to adjust the media type (link speed) for your wireless adapter, as the auto-selected default may not be suitable. You can view all the available media types with the ifconfig -m command. They will be listed in the supported combinations of media type and media options. For example, if the combination of:

media OFDM54 mode 11g mediaopt hostap

is listed, you could use the command:

ifconfig abc0 media OFDM54 mediaopt hostap

to set the wireless adapter to use 54 Mbit/s.

The remainder of the configuration is handled with the hostapd daemon. It automatically sets your network interface as up, so you don't need to do this step with the ifconfig utility. Here's a simple hostapd configuration file (/etc/hostapd.conf):

interface=abc0
ssid=my home lan
macaddr_acl=0
auth_algs=1
wpa=1
wpa_passphrase=myhomelanpass23456
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_pairwise=CCMP

This configuration uses WPA-PSK for authentication, and AES for data encryption.

Note: The auth_algs and wpa are bit fields, not numeric values.

You can now start the hostapd utility, specifying the configuration file:

hostapd -B /etc/hostapd.conf

The ifconfig command should show that the network interface is active:

ifconfig abc0

abc0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 2290
        ssid "my home lan" apbridge nwkey 2:"",0x49e2a9908872e76b3e5e0c32d09b0b52,0x00000000dc710408c04b32b07c9735b0,""
        powersave off
        bssid 00:15:e9:31:f2:5e chan 4
        address: 00:15:e9:31:f2:5e
        media: IEEE802.11 OFDM54 hostap (OFDM54 mode 11g hostap)
        status: active

Your WAP should now be available to your clients.