You first have to assign the wireless interfaces. You can do that from the shell menu or from the webgui at interfaces>assign. You should have ath0 and ath1 assigned to an OPTx interface each. Then simply go to interfaces>OPTx and configure your wireless settings there. You will have advanced settings if the interface is wireless (like ssid, wep, wpa, mode,…).

Try to get an atheros based card: http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility

Going to reuse this old post. I didn't use my Wlan that much when i started this post so i let it be nonworking, but now i want to get it to work again ;)

This is the issue:

When i use the webGUI i do: Interface -> Assign -> (+) -> Then i get a "OPT1" and can chose from sis0, sis1, sis2, ral0 the lates one (ral0) is my wlancard so the machine have found it, but when i got the Wlan tab i cant chose that card there only sis, sis1, sis2…. =/

Why is this? Is my wlan card not supported?

edit btw i upgraded to latest version of pfsense now, RC2

Appart from all the right directions contained in lsf's post I would add that you should house all of your wifi equipment in a meticulously shielded, preferably aluminum, box.

Interference first becomes evident by blocking your front-end via the antenna input path.
When you are done with this, a RF band pass filter is not a luxury in your case in my opinion, it will still reach and de-sensitize your wifi receiver through other paths.

One last advise, if you are deploying point-to-point links use the most directional antennas you can afford with the best front to back ratio you can buy.

If you look at your card spec. you will see why it is like this:

Example spec.

@54mbit A output = 13dbm
@6mbit A output = 18dbm
etc. etc.

Then dbi to mw:
13dbm = 20mw
18dbm = 63mw

so txpower = max power the card can handle.
txpowmax = max output in current mode.

If you need 24 db EIRP then you need to calculate your output, meaning radio output in mw - convert mw to db, subtract any insertion loss / connector loss / filter loss /spiltter loss /cable&pigtail loss etc. then add antenna gain.
For the 400mw cards this will not be correct. they do not show output power in mw, but rather output power in mw +10dbi (astleast some do this). so mw to dbi +10dbi -"whateverloss" +antenna gain = dbi
then you can do dbi to EIRP ( www.e-zy.net is a nice place for wireless calculators )

@lsf:

None of those cards are supported by freebsd.

Ok…  :'(
Thanks for the reply

I think one of the devs has a RAL somewhere that worked. I'm not sure if all modes (like hostap) are supported though. We provide all nicdrivers that are officially supported by freebsd but recommend using atheros chips in general as they support the full set of features (WPA, AES in hardware, hostap, …) and are used by the devs.

Thanks hoba for your quick reply. I have gotten it to work and it works very well. I am seriously impressed with pfsense. I believe that my WEP problem is related to the webgui problem discussed here…http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,770.msg8676.html#msg8676 . What I ended up doing was switching authentication from the default 'open' to 'shared' at which point I saved the setting and then changed it back to 'open' and resaved the setting. After I renewed the ath0 everything worked fine. I am not sure if this bug is being addressed but the behavior is consistently broken (I tested it three times with fresh installs each time.) It is however, a minor detail in an otherwise amazing product. Thanks to all for your hard work.

Oh I forgot to post back in here….
Well,  jrmann1999 , what I did was that I set LAN interface (OPT1) to work as LAN(sory for redunducy) and I set ATH0 to work as WAN
Then I wen and diasabled routing and NAT and configured WAN wireless setings. All works fine... oh yea i think u have to config firewall too... dont remember that was half or more yeras ago....

Try authmode open.

Thanks Scott, thanks Hoba

My WIFI PCI Card: Netgear WG311T (Atheros)

What i did the last hour: first i upgraded from BETA4 again to RC2 by executing 'cvs_sync.sh releng_1 && shutdown -r now' via Putty…

Then i followed the advise of Hoba to set the WEP Key to 'open' from shared - that did the trick! WIFI worked on the RC2! But much more Headache i earned as the internet was not accessible at all anymore - reloaded the pfsense, reloaded the Laptop - no chance, even via Ethernet i did not succeed anymore to access the www!

Made a trace, stuck on the pfsense... strange that DNS resolving worked (checked interface status of WAN - released and renewed the IP of my Provider - no effect - no access; however... got rid again of the RC2 and changed to the 'RELENG_1_SNAPSHOT-07-23-2006' - the Trick with the 'open' WEP Key still worked and now the www was accessible again (settings never changed, they were always inherited obviously as i did firmware upgrades via GUI)

So finally i'm glad that everything runs now, am wondering if the GUI shows me the next days again the CPU Load Bar fully up at 100% - even as 'top' says 5% ;-) - if so, i could live with that!

Thanks Guys, i'm going now around to change the hosts config from 'shared' to 'open'  ;D

If you have the ability to test, then this might be of interest: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/network-bluetooth.html

If this can be tested and config files and command strings needed can be provided to me, I'll try to add this to the 1.1 wireless stuff.

It's true that cards/radios that can see eachother will "take turns" but lots of the clients will most likely not see all of them, so your clients will most likely generate "noise" to the other panels/sectors. I'd go with multiple channels or antenna splitters, and for backhaul I'd use 5.X GHz.

Problem was solved.

Solution: donnot use a client program from Planet, I uninstalled this Planet aplication then try connect with WPA-PSK with orignal widnows XP program and it WORKS !

Thanks for the info. I'll just move to a captive portal and mac filtering for the residential. I was planning on having business connections rent our bridges, so it won't matter to use the same encryption key since they won't know the key.

Great!!

Route?  You mean path?  Unix uses /path/to/file.

olsr is a protocol for sharing dynamic routing info
all wirelles cards you have to put in ad hoc mode and use the same sidd and channel
so that there a backbone is forming

olsr will send out info frames so now and then
by with the ather nodes will find there neabors and the how good that rout is and to with nodes that node has access

routes you can enter in the hma of olsr and will then be shaerd on the olsrd mesh
with his you enter only the local routes of a olsr node on iets node
this info will be send out bij the olsr protocol every so manny seconds
olso route info fron other nodes that it haerd will be send so that there can form a route

if a route or node disapeers that on the holle olsrd mesh it will be gone in a few seconds
and a new route will be found if posebole