I've just opened a new thread on all my pfSense 2.1 related issues:
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,68531.0.html

@McSense:

Siemens is behind pfSense and does not play the role of the router but only as an AP and switch.

Yes, that should work for you.

It could be done on a VLAN, yes.

In the future it may be possible with something like WDS to use the wireless interfaces directly, but for now getting them onto a common layer 2 is the challenge.

I must have been making this more difficult than it had to be…. It's working now. Thanks all

Thank you all for your answers.

This is far clear in my mind now. I'll see how I can implement this now according to what the devices allows me to do (i.e. firewalling on the AP).

I see a couple of things:

1. Don't you want your AP's managment IP to be in the same address space as OPT1?
2. You made OPT1 192.1682.5 but you made your scope 192.168.2.5-192.168.2.15 which means you could have some issues there. I'm surprised you didn't get an validation error.

What is your subnet mask of your OPT1? Can your clients see the mac address of the gateway? arp -a will tell you if they can see pfsense. Not sure what kind of Wireless routers you have but if they are not true AP then try just this:

1. Set your PfSense LAN IP 192.1682.1 subnet mask 255.255.255.0
2. Set your WiFi Router LAN IP to 192.168.2.2 255.255.255.0
3. Set your WiFi Router B LAN IP to 192.168.2.3 255.255.255.0
4. Disable DHCP on both WiFi Routers
5. Plug Wire from Switch into the switchport of your APs not the router port (WAN or Internet)
6. If your APs or Switch don't support MDI-X then you will have to make a crossover cable to connect switch to switchport on your APs.

If you Select a turbo channel then it will use turbo.
Atheros (now Qualcomm) cards supports this mode but it is a "Atheros only" feature.
FreeBSD 9.x –> supports N modes, and as such only pfS 2.2 and above will support it.
If you want it now you need to bulid 2.1 With FreeBSD 9.x base. Be prepared to fix patches and builder scripts ;)

Ok i have Test some Things, but the Actual Version of PFSense is in Brigde Modus not so stable, the old Version was better.
The CPU Usage is higher, and after a half Day the Trouhput to the Internet (Cable Modem) slows down.

Smartkiller

last pid: 41525;  load averages:  0.76,  0.45,  0.32  up 0+04:29:07    20:42:50
99 processes:  3 running, 82 sleeping, 14 waiting

Mem: 48M Active, 37M Inact, 59M Wired, 24K Cache, 33M Buf, 86M Free
Swap:

PID USERNAME PRI NICE  SIZE    RES STATE    TIME  WCPU COMMAND
  10 root    171 ki31    0K    8K RUN    213:17 50.00% [idle]
52731 root      72    0 36084K 27400K piperd  0:38 17.97% /usr/local/bin/php{php}
  292 root      76  20  3352K  1176K kqread  0:21 12.99% /usr/local/sbin/check_reload_status
33303 root      48    0  4324K  2908K nanslp  18:11  5.96% /usr/local/bin/blinkled -i vr1 -l /dev/led/led
33709 root      48    0  4324K  2908K nanslp  18:11  5.96% /usr/local/bin/blinkled -i vr0 -l /dev/led/led
  11 root    -68    -    0K  112K WAIT    2:34  0.00% [intr{irq11: vr1}]
  11 root    -68    -    0K  112K WAIT    1:31  0.00% [intr{irq10: vr0}]
  13 root    -16    -    0K    8K -        1:30  0.00% [yarrow]
  11 root    -32    -    0K  112K WAIT    0:54  0.00% [intr{swi4: clock}]
    0 root    -16    0    0K    80K sched    0:40  0.00% [kernel{swapper}]
  11 root    -64    -    0K  112K WAIT    0:23  0.00% [intr{irq14: ata0}]
  11 root    -68    -    0K  112K WAIT    0:13  0.00% [intr{irq9: ath0}]
    0 root    -68    0    0K    80K -        0:08  0.00% [kernel{ath0 taskq}]
  546 root      76  20  3644K  1432K wait    0:08  0.00% /bin/sh /var/db/rrd/updaterrd.sh
4307 root      44    0  3412K  1396K select  0:05  0.00% /usr/sbin/syslogd -s -c -c -l /var/dhcpd/var/r
29835 root      44    0  3264K  1244K select  0:04  0.00% /usr/local/sbin/apinger -c /var/etc/apinger.co
  49 root      -8    -    0K    8K mdwait  0:03  0.00% [md1]
52413 root      76    0 25460K 18620K accept  0:03  0.00% /usr/local/bin/php

That's the intended effect. You must use the GUI to setup wireless completely, there isn't yet a way to do so from the console. If you attempt to set it at the console, it will not have an SSID and will do what you see.

You could maybe configure one the way you want with an SSID, and then rather than starting from scratch, pre-load that config onto whatever device you're targeting.

I would use pfsense > VLAN capabale switch > AP

(Just incase you don't get the answer you are looking for)

Yeah, by disabling the interface in the GUI. Interfaces have their own rules table, may be part of interface groups or bridges, may have aliases…all of which has to be updated/changed/removed. If you could just disable the radio, It would make switching wireless on/off a quick and painless task.

@Efonne:

Don't use that for wireless, leave it at the default setting.  Technically that setting should probably be hidden for wireless and ignored internally for wireless interfaces if someone does have it set.

Iusually dont touch it , but after a lot of enable and disable this for some reason fix it .

Right now i have the same problem but this time it's not fixing it :(

I have to look deeper into it.

People seem to essentially talk about anything related to wireless in this sub-forum if there is a pfSense system connected to it in any way.  jerusalem181 should probably make a separate topic in the Captive Portal sub-forum for that part, though, if there isn't an existing topic that already has the information to help him.

There may be a bug with MAC address handling for the *_wlan0 interfaces that may have gone unnoticed by everyone else and that I never got around to fixing myself.  Rather than assigning urtw0 directly; if it is still assigned to something, then unassign it and reboot (also reboot if you haven't since it was last assigned), or instead of rebooting you can delete the urtw0_wlan0 interface manually from the console if you know how; then create a virtual wireless interface on the wireless tab (available from the assign interfaces page) and assign urtw0_wlan1 instead or directly assigning urtw0.  If the bug I'm thinking of is still there, this may work around it.

This kind of needs it own setting, because you can only set the MAC of the base device to affect the BSSIDs of the virtual wireless interfaces that are generated.  The driver will not host a wireless network with a BSSID that differs from the MAC of the base device other than certain bits it changes when you create more than one virtual device that runs on the same base device.

There is no way to configure this through the GUI at the moment, since pfSense does not actually configure the ath0 device, instead creating ath0_wlan# devices to be configured.  FreeBSD 8 or higher, used by pfSense 2.0 or higher, actually stopped using the base device name directly, other than for querying some device details and creating virtual wireless interface that are what you actually configure with all the network settings.  pfSense 2.0.x and 2.1 internally convert the ath0 name to ath0_wlan0 instead, so that is why the MAC address setting does not affect the ath0 device.

Just for reference to those who might want to work on this, adding a setting to change it is not as simple as just changing the MAC on the base wireless device.  As far as I know, any existing virtual devices for access points created before the MAC was changed need to be removed and recreated to generate a new BSSID based on the new MAC on the base device, since IIRC the BSSID cannot be changed once an access point virtual device is created.  On boot, this setting would need to be applied before any of the virtual wireless interfaces get created.  This is because the driver won't allow the BSSID to differ from the MAC you've configured for the base device (beyond certain bit fields it changes when you have multiple access points).

@hammerman:

i followed your instructions from a previous thread to set up the wireless. it looks like the tp-link might not be fully supported.
as for the openvpn, it appears to be working but the logs say there are problems.
maybe just a couple of quick hints or should i just start from the beginning?
thanks.

More than a couple of quick hints:

Not everything reported in the logs is a problem. What you have reported from the wireless log is normal behaviour, not a problem. On the other hand, you do seem to have problems with the AIRVPN gateway, squid apparently not starting and the openvpn client promptly disconnecting but they would be best addressed in separate topics.

Answer my previous questions.

Give evidence to support your suspicions and conclusions. I can think of a number of reasons why a WiFi adapter might appear to be silent. If I know the basis of your suspicion I might be able to eliminate some possibilities and so lead more quickly to a resolution.

@CyberTiVo:

I want to have a wireless interface as my WAN connection that attaches to an iPhone hotspot running PDANet.  Which mode do I use on the wifi card?  Since some drivers do not support all modes, I need to know which mode to use so, I can get the right wifi chipset.

Infrastructure mode in the pfSense GUI.

@kejianshi:

I'd use an AP in client mode..

I have come across at least a couple of commodity APs that don't seem to be able to be configured to client mode and don't document this restriction.

In addition to what kejianshi suggested above:

Check that the subnet mask set in the AP matches what you have for the rest of your LAN, probably going to be 255.255.255.0 by default.

Confirm you have it set to AP mode, page 27 in the English manual.

At this point you should be able to reboot the AP, connect it to your LAN and access it by the IP you assigned.

Once you have it working on your LAN and can access it for administration and connect to it wirelessly you can make any other changes that you might like.

I do use DHCP to set my AP's IP address but have pfSense set to always assign it the same IP using the static mapping option on this page: pfsense/services_dhcp.php That makes it less hassle to connect to since you can then use the host name you assign instead of the IP and if you need to move the AP to a new IP all your bookmarks using the host name will continue to work.

If you want to stay with a static IP then you can still assign a host name to the AP so you don't have to type in the IP address. Here: pfsense/services_dnsmasq.php