I3 Notebook Questions & Concerns
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Most, if not all, modern nic's will support vlans. To be sure get the model of the nic and checkthe manufacturers specs. wifi gets trickier. you'll need to make sure there are drivers for the particular chipset and whether it will run in the mode you want. What's your reason for using a laptop? Is it "free"?
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A variety of reasons really.
Building a system from scratch costs nearly as much, maybe more in some cases.
Flexibility when comes time to replace and repurpose equipment.
Comes with display/monitor.Those sort of things.
What mode does the Wi-Fi need to work in?
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What mode does the Wi-Fi need to work in?
Only some of the available WiFi NICs are supported in FreeBSD and pfSense. Of the supported NICs most support (are supposed to operate in) infrastructure mode (connect to a wireless Access Point) though there have been reports that infrastructure mode is broken in some WiFi NICs that are supposed to support it. Only some of the supported WiFi NICs are supported for operation in Access Point mode. 802.11n is not supported. Some 802.11n capable WiFi NICs are reported to operate in "802.11g compatible" mode.
You could tell us what WiFi chipset (make and model) is in the laptop under consideration and how you want to use the WiFi and invite feedback on suitability of the chipset or accept there is a strong possibility you will need to add a supported WiFi device (USB or PCMCI or Express Card or mini PCI or mini PCI Express, depending on the laptop) or external Access Point to have operational WiFi.
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Are there any NICs that don't support VLANs? As far as I'm aware the only difference is that some NICs have hardware VLAN tagging supported by FreeBSD for others it's done in software.
The wifi antennas in laptops are usually not bad. They are mounted in the back of the screen though which may be a problem for you if you plan to run it with the screen closed. I would still expect it to work OK though.
As the others have mentioned your problem will likely be that a brand new laptop will have an unsupported wifi card. If it's easily accessible though just replace it with an older 802.11g pci-e card and wait for driver support to catch up!See JimP's list of supported wifi:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AojFUXcbH0ROdHgwYkFHbkRUdV9hVWljVWl5SXkxbFE&hl=en#gid=0Steve
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What about this ASUS K53E-RBR5 notebook?
But I've not been able to find a spec sheet that reveals the LAN/WiFi chipset.
Critical that LAN supports both tagged and untagged VLANs.
Highly desirable that the WiFi can be used as the WLAN access point.ASUS K53E-RBR5
http://usa.asus.com/Notebooks/Versatile_Performance/K53E/
http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/751018/ASUS-K53E-RBR5-Laptop-Computer-With/
Thanks
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According to this post on the Ubuntu forum the K53E has an Atheros AR9485 wifi chip.
This is not listed as supported by Freebsd, either 8.1 or 9.Steve
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Bummer.
Thank you.
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Additionally it seems to have an AR8151 Gigabit ethernet which is supported by the alc(4) driver. It has support for hardware VLAN tagging. However the 8151 was only added in FreeBSD 8.2 which means that it won't work under pfSense 2.0.1 but will under 2.1.
Support for the Atheros AR94XX may be added in the future. See:
http://wiki.freebsd.org/dev/ath_hal%284%29/HardwareSupportSteve
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What about this Gateway NV57H73U notebook?
According the the drivers download page it looks like the LAN is Broadcom and the WiFi could be either Intel, Atheros, or Broadcom.
But again I'm having trouble finding the specific LAN and WLAN chip sets.Gateway NV57H73U
http://us.gateway.com/gw/en/US/content/model/LX.WX702.008http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/729526/Gateway-NV57H73u-Laptop-Computer-With-156/
Thanks
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Almost any new laptop is likely to have 802.11N wifi which will probably not be supported by pfSense.
You would be better off looking for a laptop with wifi on a mini pci or pci-e card so you can swap it for an older, supported, model.Steve
