Any support for 600mw 32bitPCI Atheros 5005GS in 1.2.3 or 2.0?
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Hello everyone. I believe this is my first post regarding an issue I've had with PfSense 1.2.3. I'm trying to a couple of these EPI-3601S 32 bit PCI with an Atheros 5005GS chipset to work in hi power mode in 1.2.3. I've built several others without 802.11 but I currently have one 6 PCI slot Asus board that I'm using to play with. I currently only get around the same signal strength as what I get from an on board USB based realtek adapter in another computer(RTL 8187 chipset). I've read somewhere on a different forum that this is a limitation of the free driver written for that chipset in BSD. I haven't tried this for myself but apparently the x86 RouterOS runs it perfectly with high power mode support but that's in linux I believe & it costs money. Is there any way around this? I've read that people have also tried to manually raise the Tx to no avail. I really prefer BSD for performance/security reasons & I've built a network config that I'd like really like to keep but I know 2.0 is gonna make that a clean slate. No problem ;D
This guy confirms the 5005GS chipset in the EPI-3601S, but who knows.
http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=48771&sid=6868da5f9017e99fddec5ac9563db57bBest Regards,
PFSenseGuy101 -
Anyone? I'm stumped here & I might end up paying around $45 to a different place just to get it working properly.
Is there any other 400-600mw 32bit PCI WLAN adapters that work at full tx/rx power out of the box under PFSense?
I've noticed that most of you seem to be running non amplified WLAN cards; Any reason for this? -
I've noticed that most of you seem to be running non amplified WLAN cards; Any reason for this?
In my case the card I have provides the range I need and its legal. (I don't know legality of amplified cards in my country.)
Why do you think you need an amplified card? Maybe directional antennas would be a more effective solution.
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I'm just trying to boost my signal, I've thought of putting in an inline 1w amplifier but those tend to cost more than my card & I don't know how much more noise my signal would put out if I used one. I already have a 4 ft 14dbi omni-directional dipole antenna mounted outside my house but it doesn't seem to work properly or as good as the standard antenna that came with my router(Faked 14dbi?), I had the 1 foot pigtail made for me at a local electronics store. I would have tried to use a PFSense box with a 600mw EPI-3601S pigtailed to the 4ft dipole but it would seem a waste of time to even try.
Currently I've ordered a few 7dbi car-tenna magnet-mount type RP-SMA antennas to try to get these to go long range indoors & to replace some what I think are faked 10dbi RP-SMA 1 foot dipole antennas that I ordered from Hong Kong on eBay; Through some testing I've found that these actually put out a weaker signal than the stock 2dbi antennas. Directional grid antennas are going to be the next step for the external portion of my wireless network & will replace my 4 ft dipole antenna.
It would seem that my only option right now in terms of my 600mw EPI-3601S is to wait for PFSense to release 2.0 with the freeBSD 8.0 kernel, 2.2 or 2.3? By then PFSense's install of BSD would hopefully support the high power features in that specific chipset. All I really need is a driver that supports the features in the Atheros 5005GS chipset writen for BSD. As I've already mentioned in my first post Mikrotik RouterOS already has a working driver under Linux for this chipset….... Might have to wait for quite some time. :-\
Any ideas anyone?
Best Regards,
PFSenseGuy101 -
I just received the 7dbi car antennas in & they don't seem to be boosting my signal strength….what am I doing wrong? Am I buying to cheap of antennas? my range is very weak, same as before...I'm only about 50ft from my PFSense router AP & I struggle to get full bars; Or is this normal? There isn't really all that many AP's in my area.
Here is a link to the antennas I bought so you guys could hopefully help me evaluate this a little better.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300378554883