Hotspot tethering as opposed to wifi client

[Smart-Aswood]

Hello. New here. Just fired up a new Pineapple yesterday. First, let me say that the support I see for these $99 appliances is better than I recall getting from Cisco and other companies selling $3000 appliances back in the 90s. Perfect? No. Running network appliances is frustrating. The more an appliance does and the more options it has, the more versatile it is, the more the potential conflicts and support headaches it will have. The Pineapple does a lot! Very versatile! Lots and lots of options! The support I see on these pages is top notch, considering all that.

No, Pineapple support does not now owe me $5.

Okay, here's my question: Why tether? Why connect to a device like my Verizon Mifi 5510L managed modem via usb instead of wirelessly? Is it just so you won't have to power the modem separately? Has to be more than that. I tried and tried to tether my 5510L until I asked myself that question. Just used it wirelessly -----> no problemo. It's still doing all it's own management and works perfectly.

Apologies if this has been covered before, but I can't find this specific question asked via searches.

[Sebkinne]

Hi Smart-Aswood,

The answer to this is simple: It doesn't use up a wireless card.

Ideally, you want to use both wlan0 and wlan1 for Karma / PineAP.

Sure, you could connect a third wireless card, but that just adds bulk.

Of course, using wlan1 for clientmode is going to work, but it means you loose out on new features utilizing wlan1.

Best Regards,

Sebkinne

[Smart-Aswood]

Great answer. I knew it was something. I'll still keep doing the client thing because the Mifi 5510L isn't workable yet AND I'm staying at hotels with free wifi.

I was using a AWUS036NEH in the with wlan1 turned off USB slot (seemed much more stable) until I kept getting this filliing up my syslog

Nov 26 22:14:49 Pineapple daemon.warn dnsmasq-dhcp[1962]: no address range available for DHCP request via wlan2
Nov 26 22:14:46 Pineapple daemon.warn dnsmasq-dhcp[1962]: no address range available for DHCP request via wlan2

It was like 6 times a minute. Can you point me to a fix for that?

[Smart-Aswood]

Okay, considering what you said about leaving both radios free, I tried using an Ethernet connection to a Windows 7 laptop as was evidently done in previous versions befor MkV. Laptop is getting great internet via the hotel wifi. Broke the Pineapple access point. Pretty sure a big part of how I got this so fussed is that I downloaded Wireless Manager and was making changes with it and the Network infusion. I got rid of all infusions besides the factory setup and I'll try again.

[Smart-Aswood]

Okay I'll be darned. That worked. Also, configuring the Pineapple AP through PineAP and leaving it alone in the Network configuration. So I learned something ---> where there are more than one place to configure something, don't.

Just configure it with one tool.

[Smart-Aswood]

I figured this out too.

"Nov 26 22:14:49 Pineapple daemon.warn dnsmasq-dhcp[1962]: no address range available for DHCP request via wlan2"

That occurred because in client mode, I was using a hotel wifi for internet access AND that hotel had a system with a gateway of 172.16.0.1

From what I understand of TCP/IP (almost nothing) 172.16.x.x itself shouldn't cause those errors. It's the implementation in the hotel router's DHCP that does it. Didn't have those errors when I configured my own wireless router (using my Mifi 5510L for WAN) with those same IPs and gateway.

So interesting (not a whole lot) but not in any way a problem.