PacketFence achieves full compatibility with hostapd-based equipment, enabling use of commodity hardware like Ubiquiti and Linksys as managed access points.
The Inverse team is excited to announce that PacketFence has achieved full compatibility with hostapd-based equipment!
What This Means
This development enables commodity hardware such as Ubiquiti, Linksys, and other devices to work with PacketFence using out-of-band VLAN enforcement mode. Devices running:
- Standard Linux distributions
- OpenWRT
- DD-WRT
- Other hostapd-based systems
can now operate as managed access points in your PacketFence deployment.
Benefits
Cost-Effective BYOD Security
Deploy BYOD security solutions using affordable yet dependable hardware alongside PacketFence’s network access control features. This significantly reduces the cost of entry for organizations implementing wireless NAC.
Flexibility
Use familiar, widely-available hardware for your wireless infrastructure while maintaining enterprise-grade access control through PacketFence.
Implementation
Configuration involves several steps:
- Install the luci web interface and uhttpd package
- Deploy a specialized wpad package with dynamic VLAN capabilities
- Create configuration files for VLAN management
- Modify hostapd.sh scripts for PacketFence compatibility
- Set up wireless interfaces with RADIUS authentication parameters
Detailed configuration guides are available in our documentation.
Future Plans
We plan to distribute custom OpenWRT firmware builds optimized for PacketFence deployments, making setup even easier.
Getting Started
This functionality requires recent PacketFence builds. Visit our documentation for complete setup instructions and best practices.