Recommended 802.11G network card for deployment?

Agarax

Hi,

I'm planning on deploying a small pfSense box to sit on a 35MB connection. I'm also trying to get a wireless NIC so I don't have to buy a AP.

Here's what I'm looking for:

PCI connection
Take as many cycles off of the CPU as possible. I'm running OpenVPN and Snort, so I want the CPU to have as many spare cycles as possible.
As powerful as possible and/or a beefy antenna. I have a lot of noise on the 2.4GHZ channels where I'm deploying the box. I want to be able to punch through as much of that as possible. I can't use 802.11A and as far as I can tell 802.11N support isn't there yet.

Thanks!

GruensFroeschli

I use a lot of these:
http://pcengines.ch/wlm54sag23.htm
http://pcengines.ch/wlm54g23.htm
(with a support and without)
However they are in miniPCI format.
If they have to go into a PCI slot i use this adaptor:
http://pcengines.ch/mpci1b.htm

For antennas:
This pigtail: http://pcengines.ch/pigsma.htm
with this antenna: http://pcengines.ch/antsma5.htm
For a normal local accesspoint

For directional antennas i usually use patchantennas from "Huber & Suhner" (they are not quite cheap, but very good), ranging from 7dBi to 20 dBi.

Agarax

Any normal PCI cards instead of getting the mini PCI and an adaptor?

jimp

If you can find one with Atheros or Ralink chipset it should be OK.

I don't know the model but at one point I had a Linksys card that was really a Ralink card and it seemed OK as an AP, though I didn't use it for anything more than testing.