How to connect a wifi hotspot to a router. Bridge? AP?

Hello,
I'm new here and new to Openwrt.
I have a old Netgear AC1000 R6080 router that I can flash with Openwrt.
My problem sounds simple and I'm sure it's probably not.
I have a cell phone service hotspot with only wifi and I need to connect a item that only has a lan (rj45).
I just need the router to pickup the wifi from the hotspot and out put it via a lan (rj45) cable connector.
Any and all help will be appreciated.

Thank You,

There are two potential paths...

  1. USB tethering
  2. connect wirelessly and configure that connection as a wan interface (which will then use nat masquerading and routing for the downstream connections)
  3. use relayd to create a wireless > wired bridge

I'd recommend either 1 or 2, as it is much easier to configure.

2 Likes

R6080 has no USB port, so that's out. You want @psherman's option 2, also called a routed client. NAT is not a big deal since all wireless phone companies NAT your connection at least once in their network anyway. If the carrier supports IPv6 you can do IPv6 relay relatively simply and have a non-NAT connection to the IPv6 Internet.

The routed WiFi client is actually the only use case in OpenWrt that has a canned recipe in the GUI. From a fresh install of OpenWrt, scan for the hotspot in the wifi menu (hotspot must be switched on of course) and click the "Join this Network" button.

1 Like

Sorry, but that depends on the country you're living in - I can easily choose "Open Internet" in my provider's app to get a public (dynamic) IPv4 on my phone. For other providers, you get a public IPv4 on request (dynamic, but still with no additional costs).