USB to Ethernet Adapter NOT working
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So let's not talk about "Bad USB."
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wow, i go away for a day and then i come back and its all trash talk on USB NIC.
that was my only option, because the machine i was working with didnt have any expansion slots and only the one Ethernet port.
but now that its done, im now working on 2 separate machines that each have 3 Ethernet ports. and im not having any issues with them.
all i know is that the USB to Ethernet is working just fine, and yes all the VLANs are for separate tenants and the business i work for controlling their firewall ,
well we arent controlling yours so it really doesnt matter then, does it Derelict -
Its not so much "trash talk" as attempting to point you in a better direction.
As pointed out earlier, if you already had a vlan capable switch you didn't need the usb dongle at all.
If you were in the mood to buy something and had no free slots, vlan switch would have been the way to go. -
So let's not talk about "Bad USB."
All I'm asking for is some 3rd party source to quantify how good is good and how bad is bad?
With out this knowledge, people cant make that much of an informed choice, can they?
In my case, I need to work with the lowest common denominators which means old hw possibly a laptop as it has things like wifi, various usb sockets, a nic, serial port, battery (for ups), already rolled into one handy portable device, cheap usb nics and a basic adsl connection with a variable ip, ie the typical cash strapped consumer market.
In windows, we can assign some drivers to work with specific usb configurations, usb printers tend to be a good example of this in windows, who has ever unplugged a usb printer from a windows pc, then plugged it into a different usb port and find it doesnt print until you change the usb port in the printer driver config?
If it were possible in freebsd/pfsense to fix fw rules to specific usb hw configs, ie hub1, port3, hub2, port1, you get to introduce a physical element to the puzzle of getting into a fw, when you consider the different combinations a couple usb hubs can plug together before you plug the usb nic into the last hub which is another element of the physical size of the puzzle. Its a fairly lost cost low tech way to introduce a bit of physical security on the cheap, thats all.
Likewise the right mac id at the device which will connect into the initial usb nic on the fw, can also trigger the right rule which gives access to pfsense. So two mac id's to guess introduces two unique physical identifiers before you've even got to try the right username and password.
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If most of the time when a person plugged in a PCIe Ethernet adapter it didn't work, or worked poorly and unreliably, I'd be discouraging their use.
But as it is, USB is the interface type that holds that status. -
It does work in 2.2 rc, I've tried it.
Hmm, well I guess it's been while since i tried it. It didn't go well! So you removed the usb-ethernet adapter from the pfSense box while it was running?
Steve
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It does work in 2.2 rc, I've tried it.
Hmm, well I guess it's been while since i tried it. It didn't go well! So you removed the usb-ethernet adapter from the pfSense box while it was running?
Steve
Yep, I'll post the system logs once I get the current rc installed. It wont upgrade if you dont have the usb nic in, but then in fairness you'd be needing the usb nics in, before you could upgrade anyway, so thats a bit of non point.
@kejianshi
ase
I've had equal mileage with pcie and usb, I had one realtek which wouldnt work in an earlier version of pf but this was due to the driver not being in the freebsd version pf was running on. I could have downloaded the driver from the next freebsd release up but I didnt as I went with the usb nics. Likewise although not on pfsense/freebsd, back in the sbs 2000 & sbs2003 days, I did have an intel dual port to increase lan throughput over the network and that was very tempermental, but generally have no issue with the broadcom and intel quad & dual nics found in rack servers today. Apart from making sure things like ESXi is up to date to fix bugs which can become exploits, I've no problems.Thats what my milage has been.
The biggest complaint I've seen with usb nics is when usb2 came out, usb nics claimed to be usb2 when they were just usb1.1 that can work in usb2 ports, so people didnt see the subsequent 480Mbps max they could have seen, just usb1.1 speeds.
I'd be happy to stop using usb nics if anything 3rd party can suggest these are not suitable for xyz reasons, but today the driver builds seem quite good as I'm not really experiencing any problems with usb nics.
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The problem with suggesting that USB is a good way to go is that they aren't. Getting one working with alot of fuss after going through several different vendors and just getting lucky with one is not proof that they are a good choice.
The real situation is that compatibility is hit and miss at best and that a few "hits" doesn't negate all the misses.
If 100 people run out in the next couple years and buy the exact same interface this OP just got lucky with 8 of them will later post problems or incompatibility.
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"The problem with suggesting that USB is a good way to go is that they aren't."
So if these are by default not good, why does pfsense support them?
If usb are that bad, why dont pfsense state they do not support usb nics due and why, otherwise these usb nics could be lookedup upon as a liability in what should and would otherwise be a secure system.
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I'm not so sure pfsense is putting much effort into USB ethernet so much as BSD is doing it.
I don't like USB for much of anything other than webcams and mouse/keyboard. (I've no choice there)
I have always felt that even with windows, compared to something like sata, USB was unreliable crap.
I have an extremely low opinion of the interface in general.However, very few people using pfsense report a hassle free experience with USB NICs.
My opinion of USB with pfsense is based on watching most people who attempt to use them pull their hair out for days, weeks, months… -
The devs could choose to build pfSense without any usb ethernet drivers. However they can't really do that now since people are using them. Personally i'd much rather have the capability of using usb-ethernet if i had to in the knowledge that it's probably a bad idea. I guess they could be included as kernel modules so you have to actively enable them.
Steve
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alright, since this thread is still active.
while setting up a new machine, i originally created 8 VLANs to test them out with the switch. Everything was working perfectly. I was being given correct IP addresses, and i was able to connect to the internet. my problem im c]having now, is i had to create 40 more and now, i dont get internet at all. i get the ip addresses just no internet. i swear these machines are messing with me. -
So DHCP is working but you don't have 'internet access'. Have you added firewall rules to allow the traffic on these new VLAN interfaces? Check the firewall logs.
Try to define exactly what you do or don't have, from the cleint:
Can you ping the pfSense interface IP?
Can you ping a different pfSense interface IP?
Can you ping 8.8.8.8?
Can you ping google.com?The VLANs are on your non-usb NIC yes?
If no to any of that, what is the error message given?
Steve
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so, ping my LAN or my WAN that i have set up on pfsense?
oh and i should probably mention that this machine has 3 ethernet ports, so no usb to ethernet.
in fact im going to start a new thread to avoid confusionnew thread at
https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=86654.0
