pfSense as wireless AP transmit power adjustments?

[johnpoz]

@JonathanLee said in pfSense as wireless AP transmit power adjustments?:

just move the PfSense box to a more central location

Or what anyone should do that wants good wifi, is use actual APs, and properly deploy them to provide correct coverage.. Unless your in some small studio.. A single AP is rarely going to provide great wifi in all areas of a home.

The problem with any wifi router, or running wifi in your router like pfsense - that makes a horrible AP because of the lack luster support in freebsd for wifi in general in the first place. Is the location.. it would be rare that your router is in the best location for wifi coverage for some multi room dwelling.

If you want rock solid no issues wifi, get some APs - properly deploy them.

[JonathanLee]

WiFi in pfSense!!!!

[stephenw10]

Nice. Is that just close or did you find some useful settings?

You would be better off using channel 1 there. Channel 2 will be coliding with 6 to a greater extent. Not much in it though.

[JonathanLee]

@stephenw10

Done ch 1 now. I am next to it however it is moved it to the middle of house and changed it to Channel width HT/20. I got so tired of the neighbors internet killing my signal. I am so tired of it. This fixed it. My kitchen was the major concern and living room. I can run the airport extreme and extend the pfsense wifi if needed. Everyone is using 5-6 in our area for some reason.

1 neighbor runs about 3 SSIDs one is a guest that is an advertisement for Xfinity, they run it on a channel for no reason as open wifi as a sales pitch, it's weird I would sue them for that if it was my wifi. It is open and you sometimes connect and it displays sign up today its like a sale pitch captive portal with a host webpage and thats it.

[stephenw10]

Interesting, what tool is that?

Yeah really there is only 1,6 and 11. If you like to live on the edge, like me, there's 1,5,9 and 13 but there is some minimal interference between those. Realistically there's interference on every channel though so....

[JonathanLee]

I love Powerline Networking, forget network cables :) they work great my dmark runs to a wall outlet and i plug the other powerline adapter any plug I want rj45 at and bingo it works

This is not the same as WiFi extenders.

[stephenw10]

Yup, I agree. Some people hate Ethernet-over-Powerline but I've always had good experiences with them. Far better than WIFI extenders IMO.

[JonathanLee]

@stephenw10 the SG-2100 with the Comptex card works great!! Thanks for the recommendations

[johnpoz]

@JonathanLee said in pfSense as wireless AP transmit power adjustments?:

it's weird I would sue them for that if it was my wifi.

You understand many of these isp devices they give you will share out your internet connection to other customers as hot spots right?

Why would you run on channel 2?? There are only 3 possible channels that make any sense to run on 2.4 that is 1, 6 and 11.. If your running on any other channel your doing it wrong.

[stephenw10]

Me running on channel 5... Using 802.11b...

[johnpoz]

@stephenw10 said in pfSense as wireless AP transmit power adjustments?:

802.11b

hah - what like your bathroom scale or something.. I have seen those that still use B..

[JonathanLee]

@johnpoz I already moved to channel 1, it's much more fun.

[stephenw10]

@johnpoz said in pfSense as wireless AP transmit power adjustments?:

hah - what like your bathroom scale or something

Bunch of old thermostats. Should really change them out but....

[JonathanLee]

pfSense aka the "King Fisher 9000" Yacht

[johnpoz]

@JonathanLee what is that a printer right next to it.. Those are great for amplification of wifi ;)

Especially when their wifi is on ;)

[JonathanLee]

@johnpoz it's a printer. . . Oops

[JonathanLee]

ifconfig ath0_wlan0 txpower 40

this is the command to get out of 17% transmit power

[johnpoz]

@JonathanLee and users wonder why their wifi is problematic.. hahaha

[JonathanLee]

I found the best settings was wifi 802.11na and using -40 channel widths. It performs better than my apple airport Extreme. Whats weird is others in our area use 80 for channel widths on the 5ghz. My performance now with the 2100 is unreal. I didn't think it could do it. Movies streaming in a 3 bedroom house on different devices Xbox Nintendo switch etc iPad. It's running snort on wan and lan with AppID, squid and squid guard. I had to disable Clam AV to get my memory use down to 20-30 percent utilization. It is unreal it could be better than consumer grade equipment from that timeline now. It needed 802.11na not ng. Keep in mind my airport only ran wpa2 and with aes encryption options that thing was from 2009. I think the card dates to 2015 ish.

[provels]

@JonathanLee Weird, but whatever works. With ng I get a -40db signal, with na I get -70.