External USB 10/100 LAN network cards supported ?

[Akhone]

Hi.

Can I use PFSense firewall with external USB 10/100 network adapters ?

I have only 1 network interface (internal), and I was hoping to extend
to 2 additional network cards (usb).

Thank you.

[wallabybob]

There are a number of USB ethernet adapters supported by FreeBSD and hence pfSense.

I've been using a DM9601 based USB ethernet adapter as the WAN interface on my home gateway to the internet for a couple of weeks now and it seems to work fine. I use it for the WAN interface because its a USB 1.1 device (max speed 12Mbps) and my broadband seems to max out at a bit over 6Mbps download and 1Mbps upload.

There are some USB 2.0 (max speed 480Mbps) ethernet adapters around which would probably be more suitable for use as "LAN" interfaces. From what I've read, adapters based on the ADM8515 are USB 2.0 capable but I suspect not yet supported by a FreeBSD driver. If I remember correctly, the axe driver supports at least one other USB 2.0 adapter.

You should probably be working with the 1.2.1 RC versions of pfSense to get the most up to date hardware support.

Unfortunately I've found there is at least one DM9601 based device which are not recognised by the udav driver in the 1.2.1 kits I've tried.