The Raspberry Pi can connect to a Wi-Fi network using a USB dongle but using that same dongle you can also turn your Raspberry Pi into a wireless access point. Once set up correctly, this will allow other wireless devices to connect to your Pi and optionally you can route any traffic out through the Ethernet port and on to the internet (via the router from your ISP).
However, before looking at the steps needed to get this working, a word of warning. The configuration needed can be a little complex and if things don’t work as they should then troubleshooting the problem can be difficult. Also for this to work correctly, you need a WiFi USB dongle that can work as an access point. The best place to find information about your particular dongle and the Raspberry Pi is on the embedded Linux Raspberry Pi Wi-Fi adapters page.
Often one wants a shared access to files across machines. Traditionally one uses the network file system (nfs). The network file server works as follows: There is an nfs server that exports some directories in its filesystem hiearchy to various nfs clients that mount these directory over the network into their file system hierarchy. As a result, each of the clients shares the directories exported by the nfs server.
However a lot of times you just have to mount a directory from a server to your local computer and in these cases NFS it’s not so useful, sshfs it’s much better
Sshfs is a filesystem client based on the SSH File Transfer Protocol. Since most SSH servers already support this protocol it is very easy to set up: i.e. on the server side there’s nothing to do. On the client side mounting the filesystem is as easy as logging into the server with ssh.
If you need to run your Raspberry Pi “headless” (without a monitor) you can connect to it via SSH. But if you need access to the desktop then one option is to use VNC, which is great if you aren’t already using Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to connect with other servers. But if you are already using RDP then it is more convenient to enable RDP access to the Raspberry Pi and stick with just one type of client viewer.
RDP is a proprietary protocol developed by Microsoft. It is used primarily in Microsoft’s Windows Server products so that the servers can run without a monitor attached. All modern desktop versions of Windows (like Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8) all come with an RDP viewer (called Remote Desktop Connection) pre-installed. This means you won’t need to install any extra software to access the Pi’s full desktop from a Windows PC.
Don’t have IPv6 connectivity to your home or office network? Have you asked your ISP about getting IPv6 and they can’t give you a timeframe?
Don’t despair! One way you can get IPv6 connectivity for your home office is to set up an “IPv6 tunnel” from your network out over your IPv4 Internet connection to an “IPv6 Tunnel Broker” service that will then connect you out to the rest of the IPv6-enabled Internet.
An IPv6 tunnel can work quite well and was in fact what I used for most of two years until my local ISP just recently provided native IPv6 connectivity. The good news, too, is that there are IPv6 tunnel broker services that are available to you for free, operated by companies and organizations that want to expand the use of IPv6.
Nowdays computers are connected between each other. From the small area such as your home Local Area Network (LAN) until the the biggest one which we call – Internet. When you are managing a network computer, you are managing one of the most critical component. Since most of developed application is web based application, the network between critical.
There is why we need a network monitoring tool. One of the best network monitoring tool is called ntop. From Wikipedia “ntop is a network probe that shows network usage in a way similar to what top does for processes. In interactive mode, it displays the networkstatus on the user’s terminal. In Web mode, it acts as a web server, creating a HTML dump of the network status. It supports a NetFlow/sFlowemitter/collector, a HTTP-based client interface for creating ntop-centric monitoring applications, and RRD for persistently storing traffic statistics”
Now after 15 years, you will find ntopng – the next generation ntop.
What is ntopng
Ntopng is a high-speed web-based traffic analysis and flow collection. Ntopng is based from ntop. It’s run on every Unix platform, MacOS X and Windows.
Note that according to the ntopng download page, in addition to Linux, ntopng “should virtually compile on any Unix/Win32 platform.” However, we don’t know of any specific instructions for those platforms at this time.
If you run Ubuntu Linux, and you have a wired ethernet connection to your system, and it also has wireless connectivity, then at some time you might have tried to set it up as a WiFi access point. And what you probably discovered is that you can create a WiFi access point using Ubuntu’s “Create New Wireless Network” panel, but unfortunately this creates what is termed an “ad hoc” network, and for reasons we don’t fully understand, Android devices and some other types of wireless devices apparently can’t connect to that kind of network.
Ubuntu’s method for creating a WiFi access point will NOT allow Android devices to connect
Why this should be so difficult in Ubuntu is hard to fathom because Windows users can easily set up an access point using Connectify. This provides an actual access point. It turns out that there’s a similar program for Ubuntu but it’s not well known, because it’s not in the official Ubuntu repository. The program is called Wiconnect Infrastructure Wireless Connection Manager and it is described as follows:
Wiconnect is an infrastructure wireless connection manager built specifically for ubuntu. This is an Ubuntu’s open source alternative for connectify. It aims to provide network that is compatible with android devices.
current features:
– Compatible to connect with android devices
– Flexibility to change wifi username and password
– ability to check devices that connects to your wifi
future aim :
– ability to create repeater
– a much better gui
– ability to check devices that connects to wifi via device name and not mac address
The program is hosted on Launchpad and is available as a .deb file. So, go to the download page and download the software to your system. Then, double click on the file once it’s been downloaded, and Ubuntu Software Center will load and display this:
Wiconnect Install page as displayed in Ubuntu Software Center
Again, just in case you didn’t quite understand what we wrote above above, you cannot at this time find Wiconnect by searching for it in the Ubuntu Software Center – you have to download the .deb file and then double click on it to cause Ubuntu Software Center to bring up the above page. Once you read the page, if you want to install the software, just click the Install button. Once the software is installed, you need to run it to configure it. We have Classic Menu Indicator installed, and it appears under Other | Wiconnect, but you can also start it by going to the Dash and typing in Wiconnect. The first screen you will see when you invoke the program is this:
Wiconnect Connection tab
Before you go any further, you should check your network connections and make sure that “Enable Wireless” is on (there should be a check mark next to it) but also make sure you are not actually connected to a WiFi network. Unless you have two network adapters, you can’t both be connected to a WiFi network and simultaneously acting as an access point.
Now on the Wiconnect Connection screen, click the About tab to bring up this screen:
Wiconnect About tab
Click the button that reads “How to use this software” – it should bring up a text file that will help you if you get stuck at any point. Now click the Connection tab to go back the original screen, and then click the Setup/Resetup Wizard button. It will then bring up several screens asking for information:
The above two windows are asking for the password you use on your system when installing new software or making system changes. Some of what it has to do requires root privileges, so that’s why it needs the password.
Wiconnect Wifi Settings
On the above screen it wants you to enter the name of wireless network as it will be seen on your WiFi devices, also called the SSID. Use something unique, but not too personally identifying, so that if you are in an area where there are multiple WiFi networks you will be able to easily find your access point. As for the password, this might be called either the “password” or “key” on some devices, but you should use a really strong one here if you don’t want to be hacked. If you don’t have a program that you can use to generate a truly random password, then search online for a random password generator. The longer and more random the password is, the better. Remember that if a hacker can see your access point, he can run a program that can try millions of password combinations over time, so don’t make yourself an easy target.
Wiconnect Connection Settings
On the above screen you need to select your internet source, which in most cases will be your wired ethernet connection on eth0.
Wiconnect Save Root Password query
On the screen above, it is asking whether you want to be prompted to enter your password any time you make a change, such as starting or stopping your wireless access point. By saving the root password, it won’t ask for it each time, but as it notes, that is less secure. If you are not the only user of your system, you probably do not want to save the root password, so that no one else can start or stop your access point without your permission. After you have answered that question, you should see this screen:
Wiconnect Setup Completed screen
This completes the setup but doesn’t start your access point. To do that, go back to the original window and select the Connection tab:
Wiconnect Connect Tab, updated with correct ssid name
Note that the SSID name should now be showing the name you selected (if not, you might need to restart Wiconnect). Now click the Create Connection button. After several seconds, your access point should be operational. Whenever you want to turn it off, click the “Stop Connection” button. Note that if you answered “No” to the question about saving the root password, then you will be prompted to enter it each time you start or stop the wireless connection.
Note that if your device (that you want to connect to your access point) asks you to specify what type of connection this is, it will be something like “WPA/WPA2 PSK” – the exact terminology may vary but the most important thing is that it is WPA2.
In case you are wondering, the Advanced tab in Wiconnect looks like this:
Wiconnect Advanced Tab
The first four buttons give you the ability to change individual settings in the configuration without re-running the entire setup. The fifth lets you see a report of what is connecting to your access point at any given time – with one device connected, it looks like this (the MAC address in the image has been replaced by x characters for security):
Wiconnect “Who is connected to my WiFi?” Window
Just as a final note, we used this with Ubuntu 12.04, the most recent LTS (Long Term Support) version of Ubuntu, and it allowed us to create an access point that an Android tablet could connect to. It’s not the most beautiful program out there, but at least for us, it worked, and that’s what’s important. We particularly appreciated the convenience of being able to start or stop the access point just by clicking a button. But just in case anyone can’t seem to make this work, here’s another article that shows a bit different method to achieve nearly the same result:
To log in to your Raspberry Pi remotely, you’ll need the IP of the Raspberry Pi – this is basically like your house address and tells the host computer where to look for it on the network. By default, the Raspberry Pi will be given an IP automatically by the router (called Dynamic IP and denoted by DHCP) when you connect to a network. However, this can change whenever you remove the Pi from the network e.g. turn it off.
Having a static IP isn’t essential, however it will make repeated access to the Raspberry Pi via SSH much simpler, as you’ll always know that the Raspberry Pi has the same address. Imagine how much trouble your postman would have if your house constantly changed location 🙂
We’re all incredibly reliant on our internet connections these days, but sometimes those connections aren’t so reliable. Whether it’s due to an ISP failure, a router being down, someone tripping over a cord somewhere, or whatever other occurrence, it can be frustrating to wait for a downed internet connection to come alive again. We’ve all known users who simply hit the “refresh” button on a web browser repeatedly to see when things revive, but there is a better way. Users who are comfortable with the command line can use a better solution, which utilizes the ping tool to detect an active internet connection and the text-to-speech say command to verbally announce when things are live again. Be sure to have the volume turned up on the Mac to use this.
It should be noted that with only slight modification you could use this same technique to monitor a specific site that is down, and notify you when it comes back up. The article and reader comments also show how to receive other types of notifications, in case you are in a situation where you can’t hear a voice alert, or it would be unappreciated by others nearby.
Does anyone do any serious disconnected computing? I daresay not. We install and update our Linuxes over the Internet, and install new software, and look up information online. Networking is essential to a Linux system, and has always been integral even as our favorite glossy proprietary operating systems couldn’t network their ways out of paper bags. I like to think of IPC– inter-process communication– as a form of internal networking between processes, though wiser network gurus may disagree.
Networking in Linux is easier than it used to be in the olden days. Why, I haven’t customized a kernel in dog’s years, which was something we had to do a fair bit back in the days of walking uphill both ways in the snow. But it’s not quite pure magic yet and we still need to know a few things. Let’s start with routing between subnets. Dividing even a small network into subnets is a useful management tool for security, and for allocating resources such as file and printer shares and Internet access. You can isolate your subnets from each other, or allow them to talk to each other.
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