That should be possible if you have a wifi device in pfSense that supports it (hostap mode). It will never be as good as an external access point though.

Steve

@stephenw10 Great info guys. I am actually just now having this issue and working to get this setup. INFOrmative. 👍

@johnpoz

That’s great.  Thanks for your help.

@stephenw10 said in TPLINK Deco M4 with pfSense:

@hismuth said in TPLINK Deco M4 with pfSense:

U6 Lites

I've never used them so it's hard to comment. There are not a mesh system though as far as I know. So if you require a mesh to get full coverage now you may need to run more Ethernet lines to position APs in different places.

Steve

They can be meshed if that's really what you want, but it's best to avoid meshing if you can hardwire.

Mmm, the settings should be common so should change for all when you set them. Or at least that's what I expect to happen. The number of people running wifi with multiple VAPs in pfSense is... small!
I tried to replicate this using a WLE200NX card in an SG-2100 but could not make it panic. It allowed me to set dual standards/frequencies and even appeared to be broadcasting both but of course only one is actually functional.
I did find a couple of other bugs but neither would cause a panic.

Steve

https://forum.netgate.com/topic/170795/freeradius-mac-addresses-treated-as-users?_=1647358224113

I found the problem: I was enabling communication to any from the devices and not the bridge.

The date I've found for Norway is that 2G dies in 2025. But they've said that before, and the amount of alarm installations, oil plattform applications and other stuff has stopped the deadline for 2G before, so I'm guessing around 2030. 😂 And 4G I'm expecting to have longer than my car. I like to keep new cars that I buy for at least five, preferably ten years, and with this Mercedes EQC I can't see myself needing anything else as long as the battery lasts. The warranty is 8 years/160 000 km (100 000 miles), so that's probably when I start looking for something else. By then I'm sure the cars are flying drones! 🤘

@stephenw10 let me retest and Ill post back... I left it a bit on the side as I had a pile of work.
Thanks!

Available wifi interfaces are shown by the sysctl:

[22.01-RELEASE][root@pfSense.home.arpa]/root: sysctl -n net.wlan.devices ath0

See: https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/advanced-networking/#network-wireless

Steve

Very unlikely. The 802.11ac chipsets are markedly different to the N/G/A chips that are supported.

And in fact other people have tried that and failed.: https://www.mail-archive.com/freebsd-wireless@freebsd.org/msg05524.html

Steve

Yes you could use pools in one subnet and filter them differently using aliases but you can't filter traffic between the clients on one subnet that way. Traffic would just go between them directly without passing through pfSense. Only one interface.
Really you need to use VLANs in there to separate the traffic at layer 2.

Steve

@stephenw10 after many hours digging the internet and various tryes, found that the modem card was correctlly installed for an older firmware of the apu4d4. With the one i have the modem was detected by the pfsense but the sim card was not internally linked to that slot. After moving it to the correct pci-slot. it worked like plug&play, with the &F init string and cuau0.0.
one of the good sources of info to debug the modem is https://teklager.se/en/knowledge-base/pfsense-lte-troubleshooting/

thanks for all the help

Mmm, well the best device you can get is something based on one of the older 3x3 chipsets.
I have a Sparklan WPEA-127N which works well. Any equivalent AR9380 based card should also work. Still pretty bad compared to any current AP. 😉

Steve

@bugman

Avoid TP-Link. Some of their gear has problems with VLANs. I have a Unifi AC-Lite AP.

It depends what you are putting it in but a later Atheros based 3x3 card is about the best you can do. So for example I have here a Sparklan WPEA-127N. It works pretty good but I still mostly use it just to test the wifi components in pfSense.

Steve

You have 5 modems? They all do this?

Do you see new USB ports detected when this happens? The modem itself could be rebooting and creating a new device.

Steve