I see in the comments section that the bug may be fixed correct? The dates are real close to when it started working for me. I have been checking the nightlys frequently.

QUOTE:
"I pushed a patch to enable it, next round of snapshots will have the new binary."

Yes latest nightly Alpha head for 2.2. I see your post about the buglist showing -N- not yet fixed, but nightlys since Aug 20th have worked for me. Im not saying i get 300M connection but i see a glimmer of hope!! My current 2X2 setup at 20mhz i think maxes out at 72M but I am really just learning so i dunno. I really appreciate everyones help. I am now curious as to how AP mode holds up to many demanding users..I am just a home user. Also is –number of clients allowed-- more a wifi card limitation or hardware issue or OS. Reason i ask is i just downgraded my appliance from a Pentium M@1500 to a CeleronM@900 and i wonder where simultaneous power users would seem to hit the hardware most?? Memory? CPU or Disk speed? Radio? Anybody running dual radios??
Thanks Frank VB.VA.

I agree also with you @Derelicht :)

Well I managed to fix the problem albeit with one caveat.  I ended up replacing the wireless card again and this time with an Atheros AR5212A chipset.  I found a Mini PCI card on ebay along with a Mini PCI to PCI adapter card.  Took the Ralink out and installed the Atheros.  And what do you know, the iPad has normal speed now as well as the iPhone.  Both are showing 54 Mbps speed in Wireless status and the OOKLA speed test results are normal.

As for the caveat, the SSID broadcast has to be turned on in order for it to work.  Not too thrilled about that but it is workable for now.

So as of the latest 2.1.5 release, this setup works but the SSID broadcast must be enabled.  I'll keep the Ralink on hand in case support for it increases in a later release.  I would prefer to hide SSID if at all possible.

Usually that's done by setting up the AP in a bridged mode (or close to it) – As described in general here:
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Use_an_existing_wireless_router_with_pfSense

If you need more specifics on the pfSense end of that, feel free to contact us via your support account rather than here on the forum. I see that you got that setup and registered after you had posted this thread.

@pfSensible:

Yes, we had the same problem with a p.o.s. Edimax wifi adapter.  It would work for about 5 minutes after rebooting the pfSense and then die.  I tried the card in another computer and it had the same issue, the the problem was with the card, not pfSense.

We bought the recommended Atheros card on Ebay for about $5 and it fixed the problem.

I have not used a USB wifi adapter with the pfSense, but it may be a similar issue.  Does the Buffalo adapter work ok in your own computer for extended periods of time, or does it die after 5 minutes of use even in your computer?

Hello,
I know this topic is old. But please could you tell me which Atheros card on Ebay is recommanded ? Would like to try it and see. Thanks !

Probably forget to check one of those boxes on the interface page…

I have some news:

Installed the 2.1.5-RELEASE, and test it clean (minimal config).

Associated with WIFI_SSID, but no ping or IP (since DHCP server is not available).
Set static IP address (20.0.0.100) and gateway (20.0.0.1) and tried ping. Ping to others common hosts (20.0.0.50, 20.0.0.150, 20.0.0.200, …) works fine. Ping to gateway fail, because the gateway does not respond ping from unknown hosts, so it's ok.

Now, the moment of truth!
With the same sets, I changed the MAC address, and so... nothing works anymore.  :(
Tried others IPs and MACs address, but nothing.
Setting the MAC address to the real interface MAC address, the things come back to work.

I searched here about MAC spoof/clone, but didn't find nothing related.
Should this be a bug? May I report it? There is something else I can do to confirm "this bug"?

Cheers! o/

Maybe forget the bridging, which just adds complication, until you can get the thing working. Sometimes I wonder why people bother with bridging anyway. Is it so awful to have different IPs on different networks? Perhaps I am missing something.

Bump.

You're just asking for trouble…  Now you have to bridge that adapter with the LAN which is what all the recent "just get a switch" threads are saying is the hard way.

@ryan29:

I browsed through the config on one of those very briefly a while back and, if I remember correctly, they have VLAN support.  I don't know enough about them to be certain, but is it possible you could assign a different VLAN ID to each SSID?  Then you could filter the VLANs the same as you would if they were different physical interfaces.

I was kinda unclear but my suggested config is depending on this, and so you are correct, they do support vlan. If one would like 4 different wireless networks it's kinda useless not to use vlans, or you'd simply have several ssids for the same network. The obvious way to do it is assign the ssids different vlans and sort them out in pfsense, with filtering and whatnot.

I believe it.  I did much experimenting with the firewall and the addon packages that I'm sure something got wrecked.  Anyhow, I will be sure to remember the factory reset when things get botched.

I also have an old D-Link card in my pfsense box and it's not working either. Everything seems normal but when connecting I don't get through to the internet. Crappy hardware :)

As said, your suggested setup would work as long as you manually add rules that allow traffic between the vlans. For example if you wanted wireless traffic to be able to reach a certain server on a certain IP but nothing else, you'd simply setup a firewall rule that allows traffic from the wireless interface to that IP. It's as simple as that, really.

You could get another network card for the firewall, or you could exchange the switch for a vlan aware one. Not sure what size of a switch you use, but if it's a small one it might be cheaper.

Hi lsf,
am using a similar TP-Link router TP-WR740N for repeating function, it has WDS-bridging option.  but has similar problems, like all devices on the LAN of this router gets their own IP but their MACs are same as the router itself.

one major problem is that anyone with a single access can just use one such router/repeater and many un-authenticated devices can use the net.

I had posted a similar query in the following post:
https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=80237.msg437605

Thanks
Ashfaq

am not sure if this behavior is a bug or its normal, the way it should be with WDS bridging.
should i be posting it in bug repository ?

Ashfaq

i see that this is an older post. i have experienced the same problem and found it not to be my wifi but the walls in my house at one time had led based paint on the walls that was painted over.which turned out was blocking the signal. to check take a multimeter and set it to continuity then find a spot on the wall and stick the probes in. if it beeps, there is a high chance there is led based paint on the walls.