6

I have a 32-bit installation of ubuntu 14.04 LTS on a Pentium 4 tower with RAID storage and total 3 network interfaces (2 wired, 1 wireless which happens to be a new Panda PAU03). I've tried about every answer/solution/suggestion on askUbuntu for about 6-7+ hours now, describing connecting wireless interface to a wired NIC on the Ubuntu computer which will then connect to/serve a router's uplink.

Internet access at this site is over a cell phone's wireless hotspot which really doesn't stink as much as it sounds like it would.

Earlier a Windows machine was responsible for making connection to the cell phone hotspot, and a wired Ethernet NIC with static IP on the same Windows machine provided the Up/Downlink to a router. This gave local devices both internet access plus LAN communications to one another, and as it turns out the wireless AP feature of the router covers a wider physical area than the little cell phone hotspot.

As folks noted elsewhere on askUbuntu, with Windows it was merely necessary to "bridge" (in Windows terminology which may vary from strict definitions) the wireless and wired interfaces. In under a minute the Windows-host was handling traffic between the WAN side of the router and the wireless adapter which supplied internet access; it all worked swimmingly.

SO, now I'm trying to replace the exact capability that was supplied by the Windows PC with the ubuntu 14.04 machine. True, I'd also like to leverage the ubuntu 14.04 machine a bit more, making it participate in the LAN so it has access to printers and offers some of its RAID storage over Samba.

Since we're talking about the same router, same wireless hot spot, and same server hardware (running ubuntu instead of Windows), I suspect there should be a correct software configuration available to do it.

Illustration of desired configuration

My own attempts so far have failed. I've approached this in many ways described such as: Network Manager with a bridge and assigned slaves; Network Manager with a connection marked as "shared to other computers" (which one person said would do some NATting); also tried setting up bridge in /etc/network/interfaces.

Generally in most of the approaches tried, I can reach the Router for administration over eth1 connection to the LOCAL side of the router. The Router uplink to eth0 card connection looks good. But as far as traffic flowing over the wireless adapter: nope. Nada. Perhaps I blew the configuration on every attempt. Meanwhile for example the answer at Share Wireless connection with Wired Ethernet Port suggested something (similar) was about as easy as Windows was.

Could be because I have flu these past couple days but after 8 (or now 10??) hours on this subject I'm ready to ask for the recipe, especially one specific to 14.04 LTS.

Thanks.

Community
  • 1
Newbuntudude
  • 61
  • Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! ;-) Cool question and I'm interested, but could you draw a diagram of what you're trying to accomplish as it's a bit unclear to me. IP addresses, DHCP server, DNS server, ... Also: don't try to fit a men's foot (Windows) into a woman's shoe (Ubuntu): they're a bit different and some things are easy on one and difficult on the other and vice versa. [edit] your question to put it there, not down here in the comments, please. – Fabby Oct 11 '15 at 21:31
  • Thanks for your interest. I've inserted an overall diagram but it lacks the detail you mentioned and will try to post some additional detail in the next 24-36 hrs. On the other hand, if someone has a boilerplate for a configuration that works I'll happily try to run with it as there is a great deal of flexibility on how I configure anything on my side of the cell hotspot. – Newbuntudude Oct 13 '15 at 06:13
  • Could tethering be the approach you are looking for? If I'm reading your diagram correctly you are attempting to share the wifi from the phone with the rest of the network using an Ubuntu system as the bridge between the phone network and your local LAN using eth0 to connect to the wlan0 port on the router. – Elder Geek Aug 17 '16 at 15:45

2 Answers2

1

Since there is no short answer I recommend reading the Official Ubuntu Server guide, specifically on Networking and yes Bridging. Also, be aware of what your interfaces are actually named as they differ from the guides, versions, and answers on askubuntu.com. I've seen eth0, p2p1, and enp1s0 use this command to help start you out ifconfig -a. The guide below is from the server guide but it has excellent information which I commonly refer to. Good luck.

https://help.ubuntu.com/14.04/serverguide/network-configuration.html

Software_Programineer
  • 444
0

This is not an actual answer to your question but more of research help on finding the solution. Some sort of what I would do after reaching this point untill someone with more knowledge on the topic comes in.

Note that I am not an Ubuntu networking expert, but a self-taught user.

So, from what I understand after getting internet from the cell via WiFi, you want to:

  • Share that WiFi connection to the router via a wired connection.

There is a great answer at How to Connect & Share your Internet Connection (Wired & Wireless) that explains step by step on how to achieve the bridging of your WiFi to your Ethernet connections. It's not a way. It's THE way.

  • After that, connecting the eth1 to the router everything will be handled by the router. In case you set up custom IP's, I think all of the devices must be set accordingly.

Note that after a test that does't work out you must undo your changes, because your next test might not work due to a previous setting of a previous solution approach.

Community
  • 1
Panagiotis Tabakis
  • 2,111
  • 17
  • 22