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    Weird WiFi issues - not really pfSense related

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Wireless
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    • A
      alexandru.ast
      last edited by

      Hello,
      I am running pfSense inside a VM, for Firewall/NAT purposes, with one WAN, one LAN and one WLAN interface (actually a normal interface, but transports wireless traffic)
      This VM resides on a box that has a mini-pci WiFi-N card.
      I have configured the host (Windows 7) to make it's own access point with the mini-pci card, because in VMware I can only passthrough usb devices, not PCI, so I cannot use pfSense WiFi capabilities. Doing so, Windows creates a new adapter called "Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport", the VM is configured with this interface bridged to the virtual interface on which WLAN is configured.
      So, basically, the wireless association is handled by windows, the IP layer is handled by pfSense.

      WAN1 - pfSense - LAN(10.241.20.1/25) - Switch - PCs
      WAN1 - pfSense - WLAN(10.241.20.129/25)

      So, I can authenticate via wifi, I get an IP address assigned by the pfSense DHCP, I can ping the PCs, but:

      I can only ping the pfSense VM on the WLAN side, not on the LAN side
      I can't ping the windows host
      I cannot ping the WAN gateway

      I've done some investigation by capturing packets on WLAN interface, results are weird:

      Ping from wifi-connected laptop to 10.241.20.129: packet capture reports ok, ICMP packets captured
      Ping from wifi-connected laptop to 10.241.20.1: no packets captured
      Ping from wifi-connected laptop to 10.241.20.2(windows host): no packets captured
      Ping from wifi-connected laptop to 10.241.20.3(pc in LAN): packet capture reports ok, ICMP packets captured
      Ping from wifi-connected laptop to google.com: packet capture shows only dns request and reply for google.com

      What could be wrong?

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      • A
        alexandru.ast
        last edited by

        Nevermind, made it work.
        To be able to pass all traffic, it seems you have to enable ICS on windows host… it works, but it doesn't make sense.

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