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We are working on the firmware of some device containing a WiFi SoC. (The firmware of the SoC is not modified by us.) Our customer now wants support for WPA2-EAP because the WiFi chip seems to have built-in support for that method according to the manual.

Our problem:

We must test our software changes so we need a WiFi network that requires WPA2-EAP authentication (to check if our software sends the user name and password to the WiFi chip correctly).

Internet access is not necessarily needed but it would already be helpful if we could test if the WiFi chip would connect to a "real" network correctly. This means: If we have a setup that allows us to check if the WiFi chip transmit the correct user name and password and so on ...

Question:

Do we need a professional WiFi router for these tests or is it possible to build a WPA2-EAP network ...

  • ... using a "normal home router" connected to a computer (desktop PC) that runs the WPA2-EAP protocol?
  • ... using an old "home router" with a patched firmware (such as OpenWRT with WPA2-EAP)?

Thanks for your help.

Martin Rosenau
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    Few consumer-grade routers and WAPs support WPA-ENT. However, product recommendations are explicitly off topic here, see the [help/on-topic]. – Zac67 Aug 16 '23 at 17:34
  • @Zac67 Thanks for that information. I have already read about such routers in the internet. However, I suspect that our customer is not willing to pay money for any kind of router (neither a 19" device, nor a home-grade router). For this reason, I wanted to know if we could either use equipment that we already have at home or an obsolete home router (which is very cheap because the (private) seller would throw it to the trash anyway). – Martin Rosenau Aug 17 '23 at 08:04

1 Answers1

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  1. I've seen home routers which support WPA2-Enetrprise (EAP).
  2. Openwrt supports that (depending on underlying HW) as well and I use it at home in such setup.

It may also be possible to setup AP using WiFi network card.

In either case radius server will be required.

Tomek
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