SMC 108Mbps 2.4 GHz PCI card or separate access point?
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Has anyone tried this card with pfSense? It's quite inexpensive if it works well.
I'm also interested what are the benefits of using PCI-card over separate AP connected to OPT1 (wlan segment)? What spesific card/AP I should buy to get most out of pfsense wireless abilities?
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Anything Atherosbased should be best supported. However I have experienced that even with completely country unlocked cards turbo G modes are not available. I use my CM9 cards with turbo a. Always keep in mind that 108 mbit/s are a completely theoretical value and most soho accesspoints that are capable of 108 mbit/s are only capable of producing throughputs of around 20-30 mbit/s. That's what I get with my WRAP and the CM9 too running pfSense. However, faster hardware with a PCI-card should be able to give you more speed.
One feature that is not yet implemented is macadress filtering for wireless with pfSense. If you need this an accesspoint might be more suitable for you atm. Besides that you find nearly all the options most accesspoints offer with pfsenses wireless implementation or even more. -
Yes, faster link with proper hardware and future updates of pfsense's wireless features are definitely pros. Absence of MAC filtering is not a deal breaker for me.
I also thought that antenna wuold be easier to locate properly than separate AP with power requirement from ethernet or wall outlet. Maybe a bit less power consumption too.
So I propably try that SMC card which is Atheros based and 35€ is not a bad investment even for just testing.
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I have a few of those cards working very well with pfsense in Infrastucture Mode, I get troughputs higher than 3Mbytes/sec in this mode, in a Pentium II 400Mhz box. I haven't tried them in access point mode, but it should work very well too.
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Great, I'll make the order :).