Wireless cards/chipsets confirmed working 802.11n and STABLE with pfsense 2.2

Dalsland

I would like to dedicate this thread for listing wireless (Wifi) cards that are confirmed working with 802.11n and are stable.

Please only post in this tread if the device

is working and stable in Host AP mode (Which means it can work as an access point)
confirmed 802.11n speed (ie. >54 Mbit/s)

Please only post by listing the following:

Vendor and Model: Unex DNMA-83
Chipset: AR9160
Form factor: Mini-pcie half length
Version of pfSense: Pfsense-2.2-RC 64bit

The above listing is an example, not confirmed hardware!
Please, no external access points here or discussion about it.

Resources:
Wikpedia: Comparison of open-source wireless drivers, FreeBSD
Pfsense wiki: Is 802.11n wireless supported?.
FreeBSD Wiki: Status of Atheros Wifi Hardware.
FreeBSD Wiki: 802.11n support for the ath(4) NICs.
Current supported Wireless interfaces in pfSense spreadsheet.

Update: 2015-01-01: Please state which processor architecture you are running as well (= i386 (32-bit) and amd64 (64-bit))

rjcrowder

Very interested in this topic… anyone?

jeepster

Vendor and Model: Unex DNXA-97
Chipset: AR9287
Form factor: Mini-pcie half length
Version of pfSense: Pfsense-2.2-RC
Cellphone reporting link speed 2.4ghz N = 72Mbps

Vendor and Model: Apple Airport Extreme AR5BXB112
Chipset: AR9380
Form factor: Mini-pcie FULL length
Version of pfSense: Pfsense-2.2-RC
Cellphone reporting link speed 2.4ghz N = 72Mbps
Cellphone reporting link speed 5ghz N = 150Mbps

Pertan

Vendor and Model: TP-Link TL-WDN4800
Chipset: AR9380
Form factor: 1xPCIe
Version of pfSense: Pfsense-2.2-RELEASE 64Bit
iPad Air 1 reporting link speed 5ghz N = 216Mbps

rjcrowder

For those that have posted… can you please indicate whether you are using the 64 or 32 bit version of pfSense? Thanks!

jeepster

@rjcrowder:

For those that have posted… can you please indicate whether you are using the 64 or 32 bit version of pfSense? Thanks!

64 bit

rjcrowder

OK… after considerable "playing" I now have two cards that seem to be working at something greater than "G" speed.

Vendor and Model: Unknown
Chipset: AR9287
Form factor: mini pciE half
Version of pfSense: Pfsense-2.2-RC 64 bit
wavemon on linux reporting 65 Mbit/s

Vendor and Model: Unknown
Chipset: AR9285
Form factor: mini pciE half
Version of pfSense: Pfsense-2.2-RC 64 bit
wavemon on linux reporting 65 Mbit/s

Funny to me that both report a max speed of 65 Mbit/s - particularly for the 9287 card - which should support up to 300 Mbit/s. As a comparison, my Asus router (setup as an access point) reports about 117 Mbit/s. I've also found that they are really finicky on settings. For example, if you do not enable "WME" then the max throughput ends up being about 52 Mbit/s.

markuhde

@rjcrowder:

Funny to me that both report a max speed of 65 Mbit/s - particularly for the 9287 card - which should support up to 300 Mbit/s. As a comparison, my Asus router (setup as an access point) reports about 117 Mbit/s. I've also found that they are really finicky on settings. For example, if you do not enable "WME" then the max throughput ends up being about 52 Mbit/s.

65 Mbps is a 20 MHz channel, single stream. 117 Mbps is what a dual stream 20 MHz channel falls down to when it can't sustain 130 Mbps. These are both with an 800ns guard interval.

Now, move to the 5 GHz band where you can safely use a 400ns guard interval and 40 MHz channels, and you'll see 150 Mbps for single stream and 300 Mbps for dual stream.

rjcrowder

Actually… my bad. I thought one card was a 9287. Both cards are actually 9285's (the writing is too small to read - but I looked at what it shows up as in the OS).

Per your post - is there a way to get the 9285 to do dual stream?

markuhde

@rjcrowder:

Actually… my bad. I thought one card was a 9287. Both cards are actually 9285's (the writing is too small to read - but I looked at what it shows up as in the OS).

Per your post - is there a way to get the 9285 to do dual stream?

According to the specifications, no: http://www.qca.qualcomm.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/AR9285.pdf

It's strictly 2.4 GHz, single stream. You COULD do a 40 MHz 150 Mbps channel, but you'd be trampling all over the 2.4 GHz band and there's so much noise I advise against it, you'd be doing no one, including yourself, any favours. The specification should have never allowed 40 MHz channels at 2.4 GHz.

P.S. I'll also note, I don't know what pfSense allows. I've never used its WiFi card support, it seems quite silly to me. Why bother setting up another interface and having another part in my gateway server when the odds of the server being in a good location for a wireless access point are darn close to zero anyway? Frankly, I think pfSense should get rid of the WiFi support entirely to allow them to focus on useful functions, but that's just my over-opinionated opinion :)

rjcrowder

@markuhde:

I've never used it's WiFi card support, it seems quite silly to me. Why bother setting up another interface and having another part in my gateway server when the odds of the server being in a good location for a wireless access point are darn close to zero anyway? Frankly, I think pfSense should get rid of the WiFi support entirely to allow them to focus on useful functions, but that's just my over-opinionated opinion :)

I"d agree with you for it's primary market… However, I've created a rebranded and simplified version for home use (rewrote and/or eliminated a bunch of the screens) that is focused on firewalling and internet content filtering (Dansguardian/squid). For the typical home user, having an "all-in-one" device that includes wireless (no need for an access point) would be very beneficial.

All of that said, I'm about to give up. Even in 2.2, the WiFi support in in pfSense seems very immature and unreliable. The latest issue I've run into is that changing the channel sometimes causes the machine to core dump and reboot!

jimp

With any wireless issue (especially a crash), the first thing to do for a problem is to attempt to reproduce it on FreeBSD directly. Odds are it's a driver issue or something there which pfSense has no control over.

Though there has been at least one person that reported wireless crashes until they removed traffic shaping (altq). Wireless in FreeBSD has come a long way but it's still far from perfect. It's worked fine for me though.

Legion

@rjcrowder:

For the typical home user, having an "all-in-one" device that includes wireless (no need for an access point) would be very beneficial.

This is my use case. My pfSense box is next to the TV, centre of the living area, perfect location for wifi. Having said that, I'm still on 2.1.x with AR928x.

kop316

WLE200NX 802.11n/a/b/g miniPCI Express Card

Vendor and Model: Unknown
Chipset: Atheros XSPAN family chipset AR9280
Form factor: mini pciE half
Version of pfSense: 2.2 RELEASE

Note: I was using snapshot, and when I upgraded, it would not work. I ended up reinstalling pfsense 22 release from scratch, then it worked.

cmb

We've imported FreeBSD 11-CURRENT's Atheros driver and net80211 bits for 2.2.1. Thus far in our testing, things work better than ever. We'd appreciate additional testing. The latest snapshots available at snapshots.pfsense.org include that.

zsolty_szasz

Hi
I bought a TP-LINK Model No. TL-WN51ND, 32-bit PCI, Up to 300Mbps, dual antenna type, Operating Systems: Windows XP, Vista, 7 :P

Pfsense version is:

$ uname -a
FreeBSD pfSense.szasz.local 10.1-RELEASE-p6 FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE-p6 #0 b69ba8f(releng/10.1)-dirty: Fri Mar 13 08:37:46 CDT 2015     root@pfs22-amd64-builder:/usr/obj.amd64/usr/pfSensesrc/src/sys/pfSense_SMP.10  amd64

My wifi card type:

$ dmesg | grep ath
ath0: <atheros 9227=""> mem 0xf1080000-0xf108ffff irq 18 at device 2.0 on pci1
ath0: [HT] enabling HT modes
ath0: [HT] enabling short-GI in 20MHz mode
ath0: [HT] 1 stream STBC receive enabled
ath0: [HT] 1 stream STBC transmit enabled
ath0: [HT] 2 RX streams; 2 TX streams
ath0: AR9227 mac 384.2 RF5133 phy 15.15
ath0: 2GHz radio: 0x0000; 5GHz radio: 0x00c0
wlan0: changing name to 'ath0_wlan0'
ath0_wlan0: discard frame w/o leading ethernet header (len 6 pkt len 6)</atheros>

Status wireless:

Client:
Laptop: Dell Latitude E6410, Wifi: Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6200 AGN #2

Upload/Download test:

Thanks to Adrian Chadd, pfsense, FreeBSD!

tester100

Hi guys

My atheros still crashing with the stuck beacon even with the pfsense2.2.1 version

after a few days it running gives error of the stuck beacon here is a txt log of the crash report

i have to reboot the pfsense in order to work

attached log error

[Crash Log pfsense.txt](/public/imported_attachments/1/Crash Log pfsense.txt)

ak

Atheros AR9287 Mini PCIE Half Height - works but stops after a period of time

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/300893674625?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

I have this working, but after a day it stops connections. Disable, apply and then Enable again and its fine. I had the key regen intervals set to 3600 and 7200 and it would last about a day or so (did this to reduce the log files filling up with regen key lines and losing other useful important information). Reduced the times to 600 and 3600 and it lasts a little over 2 days.

zsolty_szasz

tester 100: Upgrade to pfsense 2.2.2 and try setting sysctl dev.ath.0.hal.force_full_reset=1

Voidburn

D-Link DWA-556 working and stable on 2.2.3:

uname -a
FreeBSD serenity 10.1-RELEASE-p13 FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE-p13 #0 c77d1b2(releng/10.1)-dirty: Tue Jun 23 17:00:47 CDT 2015     root@pfs22-amd64-builder:/usr/obj.amd64/usr/pfSensesrc/src/sys/pfSense_SMP.10  amd64

dmesg | grep ath
ath0: <atheros 5418="">mem 0xfe8f0000-0xfe8fffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci3
ath0: [HT] enabling HT modes
ath0: [HT] RTS aggregates limited to 8 KiB
ath0: [HT] 2 RX streams; 2 TX streams
ath0: AR5418 mac 12.10 RF2133 phy 8.1
ath0: 2GHz radio: 0x0000; 5GHz radio: 0x00d0</atheros>