ESP8266 Community Forum

With this firmware the ESP8266 implememnts a SLIP (Serial Line IP) netif-interface and can act as (NAT) router to the internet via the WiFi link: https://github.com/martin-ger/esp_slip_router.

This can be used as simple and cheap network interface e.g. for a Raspberry Pi (zero). It only requires a serial link and it can provide full internet connectivity. Of cause, the bandwith is somewhat limited to the baud rate of the serial line. IoT-protocols are fine, termial access as well, browsing is possible but slow (115200 bps). The router can be configured (once) via a console interface and the config can be stored in flash.

The software is based on a custom-version of the esp-open-lwip lib and a modified UART driver. For debugging purpose also a SoftUART is included.

The SW has been extended to work also as AP - useful e.g. if you want to connect other devices to a RasPi or other LInux box that has no WiFi interface or to have a separate WiFI for IoT only.

With a Linux-based host start the firmware on the esp, connect it via serial to USB, and use the following commands on the host:



Then



gives you terminal access to the ESP as router. On the ESP you then enter:



Now STAs of this AP get IP adresses in the 192.168.4.0/24 network and can reach the Linux machine as "192.168.240.2". The AP interface is NATed, i.e. you cannot set up connections from the Linux machine to the STAs, but from STAs to Linux works. Useful e.g. if you want to reach an MQTT server on the Linux.