How Do I Use Wi-Fi On Proxmox Server

707

New Member
Jul 21, 2025
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Hi,

I'm a newbie and have just installed proxmox only to realise that my server cannot be pinged unless connected to the internet via an ethernet cable. Is there a way to have it connect via Wi-Fi?
 
Depending on the setup and deviating from the official documentation,
I usually employee the Networkmanager, but instruct that one to only manage the Wifi interface.
Code:
nmcli device set <physical_interface_names> managed false

For me this usually works much smoother, especially with constantly changing WiFi SSIDs e.g. on a Laptop.

You can than just add
Bash:
post-up
and
Code:
post-down
to the bridge configuration to use it in a NAT-Setup e.g. like
Code:
auto vmbrX                                                                                                                                                                                     
iface vmbrX inet static                                                                                                                                                                       
        address 10.X.X.1/24                                                                                                                                                                 
        bridge-ports none                                                                                                                                                                     
        bridge-stp off                                                                                                                                                                         
        bridge-fd 0                                                                                                                                                                           
        post-up   echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward                                                                                                                                       
        post-up   iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 10.X.X.0/24 -o <wifi_iface> -j MASQUERADE                                                                                                   
        post-down iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -s 10.X.X.0/24 -o <wifi_iface> -j MASQUERADE
 
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For your LAN and PVE GUI management, you definitely want wired for speed and stability.

If you want to use a wireless connection as secondary with Proxmox, I recommend standing up an LXC, passthru the wireless adapter, install a lightweight desktop environment (xfce4 / icewm) and xrdp, and use rdesktop client + standard GUI tools to configure it. Give the LXC a bridged wired connection as well as wireless so you can connect to it either way.

This is the most painless way that I know of to utilize wireless on PVE without a lot of fuss.

If you install e.g. Ubuntu 22.04 in the lxc, you can use use ' nm-connection-editor ' for wireless settings GUI, or ' nmtui ' for text-mode / terminal wireless config. If you want other instances to utilize the wireless connection, you could install pihole + squid proxy and use proxy settings in your web browser(s) - as well as use pihole for local DNS