Is there anyway I can get this TP Link 802.11n Wireless Card to work??
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I REALLY like pfsense! As a router, I'll say it beats anything else I've seen. However, I just bought a 300MB/sec 802.11n TP Link wifi card and then read that pfsense does not support wireless N cards. Needless to say, I was very disappointed.
I have pfsense 1.2.3-RC3 running on a 1.8Ghz computer that has 2GB RAM. Is there ANY way that I can somehow get this wifi card to work? I'm curious if maybe the 1.2.3-RC3 release has wireless N support and the older ones do not.
If I cannot get this card to work, I hate to say it but I'll have to go find another OS (like Linux).
Thanks a lot!
~Shawn -
There is not yet 802.11n support in the underlying FreeBSD.
You will have to settle for a different OS.
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There is not yet 802.11n support in the underlying FreeBSD.
You will have to settle for a different OS.
Hmmmm…. not good.
I've read some people have got 803.11n cards to work in FreeBSD 7.1 so I would think it would have to work in pfsense if pfsense is FreeBSD 7.1. Isn't there anyway that I can modify the kernel... or install drivers, or something?
What using another computer only for a wireless access point?
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I found out that this card has the Atheros 5416 chipset in it. Is there anyway possible that I can get this to work on the just released 1.2.3 version of pfsense? Or what if I have it run at 100MB/sec rather than 300MB/sec??? Right now on 1.2.3-RC3 it is not even recognizing my card. Although maybe thats because I installed pfsense BEFORE I had the card (I was waiting for it to arrive in the mail).
Or what about pfsense 2.0??? Will that work for this card? Any ideas when it will be out??
I've tried smoothwall, and that did not work. I'm thinking of trying clarkconnect… but I'd rather get pfsense working. I've read forums of people running freebsd 7.2 having success running the 802.11n cards after some changes to the kernel. Is that possible with pfsense?
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If it's not detected with 1.2.3 it's not supported in FreeBSD 7.2 and there isn't anything you can do to change that. 2.0 is based on FreeBSD 8.0 and may support that card, but don't use it in any serious environment at this point.
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Does anybody have any idea when 2.0 will be beta?
I just want to be clear… when I say pfsense does not read my card, I mean that when I try to "assign interfaces" and I type in 'a' for auto detection, it asks me to plug in the interface and make sure the link is up (which, I don't know how to do that on a wireless card that was already plugged in), and then when I hit enter, it says that it did not detect a link up.
Am I doing it wrong or is it just simply not detecting my card?
Also, I'm using 1.2.3-RC3 and need to update to 1.2.3. Is there a possibility that maybe 1.2.3-RC3 will not work, but 1.2.3 will?
Thanks,
~Shawn -
Hey everybody… I don't know how/why this happened but I just updated to 1.2.3 (from 1.2.3-RC3) and now the card is working! The only bummer is that I have to run it in 802.11g mode instead of 802.11n. But, I'm not too disappointed because when 2.0 comes out, 802.11n should be working and I might only have to do an update!
I'm really glad pfsense is working out! You guys keep it up! You've got a great router.
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Which card is this?
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Belikeyeshua was using the word "card" in all of the posts, so I assume it was either PCI or mini PCI (and not mini PCIe since TP-Link doesn't seem to make any of those yet). It must be either the TL-WN851N (2 antennas) or TL-WN951N (3 antennas) for PCI or the TL-WN861N (for 2 antennas) or TL-WN961N (for 3 antennas) for mini PCI. As far as I know, all 4 of those use the same Atheros chip(s).
I have a TL-WN660G (Atheros 5212) and a TL-WN861N (Atheros 5416), but at least for now the TL-WN660G is working better for me (on 1.2.3 release and 2.0 beta). They are supposed to have the same specs, as far as transmit power and receive sensitivity, so it might be that there are some driver issues or that the Atheros 5416 chip might not work as well in compatibility mode. Another possibility could be that the TL-WN861N might require two antennas to meet the stated specs, and I may have broken something inside one of mine sometime.
