Wireless access point to switch?

rotteneggz · Jan 21, 2009, 4:23 PM

Hey,
Pfsense newbie here. Heard some great things about it so decided to give it a shot. So far i got everything installed and running but have a small question to ask. Is it possible to connect an access point to a switch? Is it any different then connecting it to a network card on my pfsense box?
Thanks

wallabybob · Jan 22, 2009, 12:55 PM

If you have your access point connected to a switch then all the wireless clients are effectively on the same LAN as all the computers connected to the switch.

If you have the access point connected to the pfSense box through an additional NIC card in the pfSense box then I think you have more configuration options, for example, you can bridge the wireless LAN and LAN so that things look much like connecting the access point to the switch OR you can treat the wireless LAN as a separate network with restricted access to the LAN.

Also, pfSense supports a number of wireless LAN cards so you can turn your pfSense box into a router-firewall-wireless access point. I have such a system at home which happily supports three family laptops with wireless access and about six wired computers. Currently the wireless support in pfSense is 802.11b and 802.11g only which is probably plenty fast enough for many home applications.

rotteneggz · Feb 2, 2009, 8:56 PM

@wallabybob:

If you have your access point connected to a switch then all the wireless clients are effectively on the same LAN as all the computers connected to the switch.

If you have the access point connected to the pfSense box through an additional NIC card in the pfSense box then I think you have more configuration options, for example, you can bridge the wireless LAN and LAN so that things look much like connecting the access point to the switch OR you can treat the wireless LAN as a separate network with restricted access to the LAN.

Also, pfSense supports a number of wireless LAN cards so you can turn your pfSense box into a router-firewall-wireless access point. I have such a system at home which happily supports three family laptops with wireless access and about six wired computers. Currently the wireless support in pfSense is 802.11b and 802.11g only which is probably plenty fast enough for many home applications.

Thanks for the detailed information. I'm going to do some testing with different configurations before putting it into productions. Since my switch supports VLAN's, i'll try to put the W.A.P. on its on VLAN. Unfortunatley i don't have enough room in my pfsense for another card since its on a 1u server.