Ubiquiti SR-71 USB (SWX-SR71) on either 1.2.3 or 2.0RC ? - THREAD HIJACK …
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I have the Ubiquiti SR-71 USB device (SWX-SR71) and would like to use it with pfsense.
Will this work with any available pfsense build - either 1.2.3 or the 2.0 RC ?
I did a quick load of FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE and I saw an "ATHEROS" message in my dmesg, but was not able to test it further before removing that 8.1-RELEASE installation.
Just looking for someone to confirm/deny this particular hardware….
Thanks.
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Just looking for someone to confirm/deny this particular hardware….
It is pretty hard to confirm/deny without knowing the chipset.
Assumeing the ATHEROS you saw flash by was associated with your Ubiquiti USB device:
If I recall correctly FreeBSD 8.x (x=0 or 1) was the first FreeBSD kernel to support an Atheros USB WiFi device. This suggests your device is not supported in pfSense 1.2.3 but possibly is supported in pfSense 2.0. (I say possibly because there have been a few occasions when device drivers for newly supported devices haven't been built into the pfSense kernel until someone reported the omission.)People using WiFi devices with pfSense often want to use them as Access Points. The Atheros USB WiFi driver in pfSense 2.0 does not support Access Point mode.
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It seems this is probably the AR9170 chipset. However I found conflicting information saying it could 9160. :-
Either way I don't believe it will work as the uath(4) driver only supports ar5xxx usb at this time.However it would be best to test it to be sure.
Try running pcbsd 8.1 live cd.Steve
Edit: Not much action on that driver recently. See here.
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Ok, thank you very much.
I am hijacking my own thread here to simply ask, what USB wifi NIC should I buy ?
I have no existing infrastructure or loyalty, and price is no object, so its really a clean slate.
The only requirement is that it work properly in a USB 1.0 slot, since this is an older laptop. AND it needs to accept external antennae. N would be nice, if there's a solid b/g/n USB nic that is "the one" for pfsense….
Thanks.
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A lot of older laptops have a cardbus slot or two. If you have a free slot I'd suggest you get a CARDBUS <-> USB 2.0 adapter to get the higher bandwidth that is available compared with USB 1.x.
I have never tried a USB WiFi adapter in a USB 1.x port.
I've had satisfactory results with the TP-Link TL-WN321G and Tenda W311U. The TP-Link is supported in pfSense 1.2.3 and later, the Tenda in pfSense 2.0 RC1 and later. But neither of these have an external antenna connector.
I have noticed that there is a Tenda W311U+ which has a detachable antenna. I don't know if this device uses the same chipset as the W311U.
The EDIMAX EW-7711UAN has a detachable antenna and appears to use the same chipset as the Tenda W311U.