@wallabybob:
@kcallis:
So, athough the wi0 interface is seen at boot time (from the console), there is still a need to add it via the web interface?
Yes, unless you reboot and do it from the startup menu (item 1).
pfSense supports a few different USB wireless devices but not all USB WiFi devices. Its reasonably likely your Netgear USB WiFi device is not supported. What model is it and what revision? (Or you could just plug it in and see if the kernel recognises it as a WiFi device.)
I made my changes to the the WAN interface and the wireless information. When I reboot, the WAN never connects to the ClearSPOT. Furthermore, I keep getting a wi0: device timeout every couple of minutes. I tried to set the WAN to a static address and still no go… Looking at STATUS: Wireless, my SSID never shows up, although I do see a couple of wireless devices that show on ADDR section. I am at a loss...
--- As a side test, I decided to use pfsense little brother to see if I could get things working. So in went monowall 1.2.3-RELEASE, to see where things might go. After a 10 minute wait, I was connected to the ClearSPOT device as the WAN, and my Linksys WRT160nl for the LAN side. After a couple hiccups, life was once again pleasant. So I thought I could go back and just re-do everything that I did on monowall and do it on pfsense. Although pfsense can find the wireless card in my laptop (Lucent 802.11b card), I can never get it to associate. So after sitting around playing with it for a bit, I went back to monowall, and called it a day.