hostapd

Updated 2026-08-01

hostapd (host access point daemon) is a user space daemon software that enables a network interface card to act as a wireless access point and authentication server. It is primarily used on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems to create software-based Wi-Fi hotspots.

Overview

The name "hostapd" is a contraction of "host access point daemon." It runs as a background process (daemon) and handles the backend components of wireless authentication and access point management. There are three distinct implementations: Jouni Malinen's hostapd, OpenBSD's hostapd, and Devicescape's hostapd.

Jouni Malinen's hostapd

This is the most widely used implementation. It is developed by Jouni Malinen and others, licensed under BSD, and is cross-platform. The latest stable release is version 2.11, dated 20 July 2024.

It implements the following standards and features:

IEEE 802.11 access point management – enabling a network interface to function as a wireless access point.
IEEE 802.1X/WPA/WPA2/WPA3/EAP Authenticators – supporting various Wi-Fi security protocols.
RADIUS client – allowing the access point to communicate with a RADIUS authentication server.
Integrated EAP server – supporting Extensible Authentication Protocol methods.
RADIUS authentication server – capable of acting as a standalone authentication server.

Supported operating systems include Linux (via Host AP, MadWifi, Prism54, and drivers using the kernel's mac80211 subsystem), QNX, FreeBSD (net80211), and DragonFlyBSD.

OpenBSD's hostapd

OpenBSD's implementation is a user space daemon focused on improving roaming and monitoring of OpenBSD-based wireless networks. It implements the Inter Access Point Protocol (IAPP) for exchanging station association information between access points. It can trigger actions such as frame injection or logging when specific IEEE 802.11 frames are received.

Devicescape's hostapd

This is the Open Wireless Linux (OWL) version of hostapd, kept as close as possible to the original open source release but with OWL-specific packaging and defaults. The project's website became inactive around April 2013.

Usage

hostapd is commonly used to create wireless hotspots from a Linux computer. It is typically configured via a configuration file and can be controlled through a frontend program such as hostapd_cli, a text-based utility included with the software. The daemon supports creating multiple access points on the same network interface card (if the hardware supports it) and can operate different access points on different interfaces simultaneously.