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    ESXi 5.0.1 looking for wireless NIC

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    • P
      pf123user
      last edited by

      Looking for a wireless NIC ideally B/G/N but can just be B/G.

      can be PCI or PCIe but not PCI-X. What's out there that everyone is using?

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      • J
        JoelC707
        last edited by

        You have a couple of options but on the whole, what you want will not "officially" work as ESXi does not support ANY wireless nic. Official VMware HCL for reference: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=io

        Option 1: Possibly use a 3rd party driver to compile your own support. This tends to be hit or miss, there were a lot of community compiled drivers for 4.0/4.1 but I did not see any wireless nics in the whitebox HCL list and I do not know of a good list for 5.0/5.1 other than searching here: http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=23

        Option 2a: If your setup supports IOMMU/AMD-Vi for PCI device pass-through, you could (in theory) use any wireless NIC you like as long as it is supported on pfsense (I don't know what specific cards those are so I'll let others chime in with those suggestions).

        Option 2b: If you don't have IOMMU/AMD-Vi support, you could try USB pass-through. This may be more trouble than it's worth as I had a hell of a time just getting a printer to stay connected to the guest. Probbaly also need the Official VM Tools installed, not the OpenVM Tools - it's doable but not as easy as the built-in package installation. Same goes for others chiming in on supported USB nic options here.

        Personally, I don't like any of the available options but it is what it is. If anyone else has other ideas I'd be happy to hear them.

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