I try just now after a reboot and it work well!!  ??? I don't understand everything but after all it work.

Thanks everyone for your help. ;D

Last I saw, the Intel cards – even if they did work -- do not work in hostap mode, so they could not be used to setup a pfSense access point. They could only be used for wireless WAN.

It looks like the iwn driver would support the 4965AGN, and if that isn't already in pfSense 2.0 it could probably be included in the kernel config (it may not have been updated to include that driver). However, as I said in the previous paragraph, the iwn(4) man page for the driver indicates that it doesn't support hostap mode, only station, adhoc, and monitor modes.

The challenge isn't just finding an N card that works with FreeBSD, but also an N card which has a driver that supports hostap mode with N.

I just received the 7dbi car antennas in & they don't seem to be boosting my signal strength….what am I doing wrong? Am I buying to cheap of antennas? my range is very weak, same as before...I'm only about 50ft from my PFSense router AP & I struggle to get full bars; Or is this normal? There isn't really all that many AP's in my area.

Here is a link to the antennas I bought so you guys could hopefully help me evaluate this a little better.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300378554883

sigh, search the forum - sounds like you are having the same issue i was.  my tplink ath unit works fine -until it doesn't and i have to reboot to "fix" it.  it's been okay for a couple of weeks now, though.

Belikeyeshua was using the word "card" in all of the posts, so I assume it was either PCI or mini PCI (and not mini PCIe since TP-Link doesn't seem to make any of those yet).  It must be either the TL-WN851N (2 antennas) or TL-WN951N (3 antennas) for PCI or the TL-WN861N (for 2 antennas) or TL-WN961N (for 3 antennas) for mini PCI.  As far as I know, all 4 of those use the same Atheros chip(s).

I have a TL-WN660G (Atheros 5212) and a TL-WN861N (Atheros 5416), but at least for now the TL-WN660G is working better for me (on 1.2.3 release and 2.0 beta).  They are supposed to have the same specs, as far as transmit power and receive sensitivity, so it might be that there are some driver issues or that the Atheros 5416 chip might not work as well in compatibility mode.  Another possibility could be that the TL-WN861N might require two antennas to meet the stated specs, and I may have broken something inside one of mine sometime.

Well, I can tell you what not to buy: an EnGenius EPI-3601S

It installed painlessly, and the transmit power is excellent, but the sensitivity is so poor that I can't connect to the thing when I'm standing right next to it.

pfSense 1.2.3 is built on FreeBSD 7.2 so if your card is supported by FreeBSD 7.2 its also supported in pfSense 1.2.3.

pfSense 2.0-BETA is built on FreeBSD 8.0 so if your card is supported by FreeBSD 8.0 its also supported in pfSense 2.0-BETA.

FreeBSD support can be checked by looking up the man page for the appropriate drivers at http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi (Select the appropriate FreeBSD version.) The ral driver supports some Ralink PCI chipsets and the ural and rum drivers support some Ralink USB chipsets.

It would seem from reports in theses forums that Atheros based PCI cards are more commonly used in the pfSense community than Ralink based PCI cards.

@wallabybob:

@varazir:

Well then I have to look for another usb wireless adapter

I've had positive experience with USB adapters based on the Ralink chipset (rum driver). I've used a D-Link DWL G122 and a TP-Link TL-WN321G. Unfortunately D-Link have the practice of changing the chipset in their devices without changing the model number, making it a bit hard to be sure that you are buying a device with a chipset supported by FreeBSD. The D-Link I bought on eBay was a hardware rev C and that seemed to work OK with the FreeBSD rum driver, though it didn't get a lot of use.

When last I looked, I couldn't find any adapters based on the earlier Ralink chipset supported by the ural driver.

Borrow a D-link rev C adepter from a friend and it worked great

Yes, I've read that thread. Hopefully this problem will be solved in pfsense 2.0. I do not think I will test out pfsense 2.0 for at least a couple weeks from now. Maybe a month or so. But, hopefully it will be solved then.

I'm also thinking about getting a couple better quality antennas. The ones I have are not that great.

Right now the wireless doesn't even work when I've placed the router where it goes… its too weak of a signal.

@wallabybob:

olsr is …?

huh, ask google/yahoo/etc.
http://hipercom.inria.fr/olsr/  (eng.)

Ok, I understand.

It's a pity though that the wireless stability leaves a lot to be desired with the latest releases. At least that's my personal experience.
I used to use Ralink cards, but I read that Atheros based cards were better, and changed to an Atheros based wireless nic.

In a sense it works great for regular surfing, but I can't for example download a 600MB file over my wireless connection (antenna is only two meters away from my client) because it seems when there is 'a lot' of traffic my wireless connection resets itself. So my download gets interrupted every time.

yes

thanks for the replies
i think for the simplicity sake, im going to leave it as is
still having some minor issues with wireless (mac wont connect when ssid is hidden, connects fine when not hidden)
but other than that, im quite happy with how it works right now
was just pondering if anyone uses two mini-pci wireless cards to improve signal strength

Thanks, I hadn't thought of trying that :)

I just did this (the thread's topic), and it works great.

Physical Setup: One of the WRT54G LAN ports to pfSense LAN ( in my case, the house switch ).

DD-WRT Setup ( Basic Setup tab ) ( DD-WRT v24 )
WAN Connection Type: Disabled
Router IP: Local IP Address: [ Something other than your pfSense box ]
Network Address Server Settings (DHCP): DHCP Type: DHCP Forwarder
DHCP Server: [ the IP address of your pfSense router ]

Note: If the Linksys' LAN IP was/is the same as you pfSense box (you know, the common 192.168.1.1), make sure you change that before hooking it up in the pfSense's LAN.

@shadow:

I assume the answer's gonna be the same, the drivers, come from upstream…

Yep. See my post in that thread http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,20092.msg104940.html#msg104940