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    PfSense under the hood

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Wireless
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    • L
      littlebi
      last edited by

      Hi,

      I'am a littlebit new to the BSD distros and gained some experience in configuring my soekris box as a wlan AP on openBSD which all went well, but failed in extending the range of it's wlan with repeaters.  >:(
      In my search for a solution, I ran into pfSense, which brings all solutions with it out of the box. WONDERFULL!!!
      But before I switch over to pfSense, I wanted to ask how it is configured the manual way?
      Since BSD distros are configured in a similar ways and some aren't but it can be derived, I was wondering how pfSense works under the hood when configuring pfSense to act as an AP allowing Wlanrepeaters to extend the range of my wlan.
      And how is pfSense configured as a Repeater?

      Thank you for all the help in advance.

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      • E
        Efonnes
        last edited by

        PfSense itself does not have support for acting as a repeater at the moment (I wanted to get it into pfSense, but I could not get it working in the base FreeBSD system).  The only kind of repeater that currently works with pfSense is the kind that has a mode to act as a normal wireless client.

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        • S
          Supermule Banned
          last edited by

          Cant you give all the ap's the same Ssid ???

          When AP1 gets to weak the client pc or laptop will look for the same ssid but a stronger one and makes a conection to that one and then releases the weaker one?

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          • T
            thermo
            last edited by

            @Supermule:

            Cant you give all the ap's the same Ssid ???

            When AP1 gets to weak the client pc or laptop will look for the same ssid but a stronger one and makes a conection to that one and then releases the weaker one?

            It's possible but requires that you have Ethernet cabling where you want to extend the range. Repeaters only require power.

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            • L
              littlebi
              last edited by

              @Efonne

              I had such an idea, but doing a vlan onto my wireless failed.
              If you where successful @ it, could you show me your config?

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              • E
                Efonnes
                last edited by

                If you are trying to do it with pfSense only, I suppose one potential workaround would be to have a second subnet on your main access point using an IP alias type virtual IP, configure the wireless client on the "repeater" access point to use an IP in that second subnet, create a GIF tunnel between the two that uses those IP addresses as the endpoints, and bridge the GIF tunnel with the access point (and wired network if you want one bridged to it) on both devices.  Another option would be to use an OpenVPN connection with no encryption and the tap interface mode for the tunnel.  Basically any tunnel you can bridge with another connection would work.

                Note that I have not actually tried this myself, but in theory it should work.

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                • T
                  taktje
                  last edited by

                  i have 2 nic's in my pfsense.
                  1 WAN
                  1 LAN

                  the LAN has ap wds connected
                  the second ap wds is 300 meters away.

                  when connected to ap wds on the LAN (wireless) everything works.

                  when i connect to ap wds 2 (300 meters away) it will not five me an ip address.

                  both ap have static ip
                  and they are connected with eachother

                  someone any ideas how to fox this

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