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title: Dear RPi Users
layout: post
date: 2022-11-13 23:09:29
permalink: /blog/2022/NOV/13-dear-rpi-users.php
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This is an open letter to people who have written things about making a WiFi AP with a Raspberry Pi.

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Dear Tutorial Writers,

First of all; thank you for what you've done for the community as a whole. Without your efforts, tons of people would be completely utterly clueless about how to do things. But I have to say, some of the advice you give

## is really fucking stupid.

First off, let me point out the differences between a Wireless *Access Point* and a *Wireless Gateway*. 

You see, a wireless access point is a wifi radio that gives me access to the network it's plugged in to. My device connects to it, and I get dropped on to my LAN. Simple, right?

## THEN WHY DO YOU GET IT WRONG?

On the offchance there was something funky about the RPi's internal Wifi; I started looking at what others had written about doing this. Your titles proudly proclaim you're making a WiFi AP, you go about explaining it, then you use dnsmasq as a requirement. Why is this a problem?

## Because that is not a wireless access point.

When you start talking about using dnsmasq and NAT; you're not making JUST an access point; you're making a gateway...or a router. You are effectively cutting off the wifi clients from the network they want to connect to. 

## ONE DOES NOT NEED TO DOUBLE NAT THEMSELVES

Why are you doing this to people? Why are you telling them one thing but then explaining another? Do you realize in a traditional wireless AP; there's none of that. There's no routing, there's no NAT...there's a wifi radio and a network bridge.

Now you may be saying "but hold on, my other WiFi AP's do this". They're not strictly APs. They're routers. They're a router, firewall with NAT, and wireless AP rolled in to one single device. These are three seperate items. 

I don't think the person trying to make a Wifi AP out of a Pi on thier home network doesn't need the headache of double NAT. Why? Why why why? Why are you stooping to their same level of misunderstanding? You've got a chance to educate people about how things really work; and you take the lowest common demonitor way out. 

Every single tutorial I read did not explain how to make a wifi access point; they explained how to make full routers/gateways. The devices you connect won't be on your network; they will be on your own network. All access will be gated through the Pi. It's no wonder I read comments of people complaining about problems related to double NAT when following them...wondering why it didn't work.

You need to do a better job of explaining what you say; and explaining to people what they're doing. You want to know what it takes to make a basic wifi AP in Linux?

hostapd to put the wifi in to master mode; and a network bridge containing your LAN and WLAN interfaces.

That's it. There's ZERO need to have dnsmasq issue IPs; the network likely has a DHCP server on it. The only reason you need to NAT is because you (incorrectly) told someone how to make a gateway. 

Please stop shoveling this kind of shit. It's bad enough I think the RPi is a pretty lousy platform; the bad tutorials make it impossible for me to recommend it for any use outside of very specific cases.
