(Partly copied and pasted from another post of mine.) The only 802.11n chipsets I know of that work as an access point in FreeBSD are the ones supported by the ath driver (Atheros) and the mwl driver (Marvell 88W8363). Some supported 802.11n chipsets I know of for Atheros are 5416 (802.11b/g/n) and 5418 (similar to 5416, but I think also supports 802.11a and 5 GHz 802.11n).  802.11n rate control is not yet implemented in the FreeBSD driver for Atheros chipsets, so only up to 802.11a/g speeds will work. The Marvell 88W8363 is an 802.11n chipset with support for 802.11a/b/g/n, but the driver doesn't seem to support 802.11n rates yet and was just added in FreeBSD 8.0, so it is not possible to use the card in anything before pfSense 2.0 beta.  I've only seen one model of card that I know uses it, a mini PCI card (though converters to regular PCI are available), and it only seems to be available on eBay from around 2 to 4 different sellers in China.

Thanks for the info. WiFi is just for the internet, the file transfers are all done via ethernet hence the need for gigabit eth. I'll probably keep the WRT54G as the WiFi AP anyways because it seems it will do a much better job than a WiFi card in the pfSense box.

Cool!

Ah, you are right, i changed too much and also set the wlan-adapter to dhcp… Changed it back. Does this look correct? LAN interface (vr0) Status up MAC address 00:0d:b9:1c:cc:ec IP address 192.168.1.100  Subnet mask 255.255.255.0 Media 100baseTX <full-duplex>In/out packets 6049689/8669774 (1.65 GB/1.38 GB) In/out errors 0/0 Collisions 0 Bridge (bridge0) learning WLAN interface (ath0) Status associated MAC address 00:80:48:68:5e:36 IP address 0.0.0.0  Subnet mask 255.0.0.0 Media autoselect mode 11g <hostap>Channel 2 SSID Michas In/out packets 995/8541 (179 KB/39 KB) In/out errors 3407/0 Collisions 0</hostap></full-duplex>

I don't know how relevant it is to this thread, but the other ipod/iphone threads have been locked so… I was running pfsense 1.2.2 as access point (wpa2/tkip) and my ipod was able to connect, but had timeout issues and could not download anything over WiFi. Yesterday I upgraded to pfsense 2.0 beta (4-22-2010 build) and now everything is fine with exactly the same WiFi settings.  No timeout issues and downloads are great.

It does not currently have a channel width option, but I'm fairly sure the base system does.  It wouldn't be too difficult to add, though it would likely only be implemented for 2.0. As for additional channels, if your card supports them, you should probably see them in the list.  Otherwise, they will not be listed.  There is also a possibility that ifconfig on FreeBSD does not support listing those channels, though.  ifconfig gets its information from /etc/regdomain.xml

I have the same problem with the same wifi card (CM9 Atheros chipset) on a Soekris net5505 miibus5: <mii bus=""> on sis1 nsphyter1: <dp83815 10="" 100="" media="" interface=""> PHY 0 on miibus5 nsphyter1:  10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto sis1: Ethernet address: 00:00:24:ca:df:d5 sis1: [ITHREAD] ath0: <atheros 5212=""> mem 0xa0010000-0xa001ffff irq 15 at device 17.0 on pci0 ath0: [ITHREAD] Fatal trap 1: privileged instruction fault while in kernel mode instruction pointer    = 0x20:0x3 stack pointer          = 0x28:0xc1020944 frame pointer          = 0x28:0xc1020958 code segment            = base 0x0, limit 0xfffff, type 0x1b                         = DPL 0, pres 1, def32 1, gran 1 processor eflags        = interrupt enabled, resume, IOPL = 0 current process        = 0 (swapper) trap number            = 1 panic: privileged instruction fault</atheros></dp83815></mii>

The dropdown represents the % of the maximum power not the absolute power.

OK, got my pigtail and set up the internal card, everything is working just fine now, looks like pfSense + Belkin G + OS X is a bad combination…

I use a Kelkin wireless N1 [+?] (MIMO) as my network AP and it works just fine for me…

It was a tp-link atheros card and bridged with the ethernet lan card.  The current netgear is just acting as an AP and all is well.

I usually keep my wireless network on channel 11 since most devices don't seem to use that channel (not sure why) or some other random channel that is "technically" meant for other countries (Mexico, Japan, etc), works wonders for me, but yea other wireless devices can really play havoc with wi-fi…effectively your phone was acting like a signal jammer to the wi-fi.

@kpa: @NoProbRob: As I understand it, in order to use authentication, I cannot use an external wireless AP (such as WRT54G) because that won't pass the MAC address of the client PC thru to pfSense to use for the authentication. Yes you can as long as the wireless AP operates as a bridge between wireless and wired networks and does not do any routing. Thanks for the reply! Thanks to you I've got it working in a "simulation mode" with another router connected as the WAN providing an "up" connection with DHCP, etc., and two laptops entering through the wireless into the LAN side. Captive Portal catches the laptops, then allows them through to that fake WAN after authenticating. It all seems to work smoothly, so I expect it to do so when I hook up the real WAN. I thought I had heard or read somewhere that the MAC wouldn't be passed thru the wireless, but it would make sense that that would be the case only if the wireless was handling DHCP, routing, etc. As you said, it does seem to work with the wireless serving as a "dumb" AP bridge to the LAN and nothing more.  I guess I had a "mental block" about the MAC so I foolishly didn't look into it further. Thanks again!!

FYI- this is covered in the Doc Wiki also: http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Use_an_existing_wireless_router_with_pfSense

Do you want to bridge the pfSense? You can only bridge the wireless interface if it is in access-point mode. So you would have to run the AP on the pfSenses side, or set up a routed network (which is imo more proper than a bridged scenario).

Were you getting any "stuck beacon" error messages in your system log?  I've seen that at first with both Atheros-based cards I've tried (5212 and 5416 chipsets).  Changing channels or removing the antennas sometimes would make it stop.  It eventually seemed to go away on its own in both cases after I had already tried changing channels, rebooting, etc., and I was then able to use the channel I wanted without seeing the error.  They may require some kind of calibration period before they work right on the ath driver. I've also seen good results from a card I have that is based on the Marvell 88W8363 (mwl driver in FreeBSD), but with no initial issues either, unlike the Atheros cards.  It does require at least FreeBSD 8, however; which means it won't work in pfSense 1.2.3, only 2.0.  The card supports 802.11n, but the mwl driver doesn't seem to support 802.11n rates yet (only up to 54mbps).  Like ath, the mwl driver also supports virtual access points on 2.0 (new in FreeBSD 8 ), but unfortunately the mwl driver is currently missing something that is needed for the additional access points to actually be usable by wireless clients.

a restart seemed to do it.  I guess i assumed that was not required.  Thanks for the tip.  I was trying your other suggestion but it was taking a while and not finishing.