Alternative for pfSense WLan

sunghost

Hi,
perhaps its a bit uncommon question but i offen read that pfSense supports only a few wifi cards and mostly not with the new standards of +300mbits and there are a lot of problems… So my question is is there a distri like pfsense as firewall but only for wifi? which supports e.g. guest network (hotspot, captive portal), dual band (IEEE 802.11n and IEEE 802.11ac) Quality of Service, Client Steering .... and runs on x86 or x64 systems.

Andy idea or advise?
thx

doktornotor

Get whatever AP and plug its LAN to pfSense RJ45. Set static IP on its LAN and disable DHCP. Done.

sunghost

Your right, that whould be the easiest way ;). But i mean a system like pfsense but only for wireless. like the operating system on ap's. is there any opensource…?

doktornotor

DD-WRT, OpenWRT…

sunghost

Any experience with one of that? I read about both and it seems that both have pos and negs and one problem is the actuality of both and the many versions with different possibilities.

johnpoz

That would be your AP you get.. Not some distro or firmware. Yes firmware can be put on some wifi routers and provide more features than the maker, etc.

So unifi that has a software controller than you can run on linux, windows, mac, etc. Can provide those features your asking about.

https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap/

Its amazing how people want enterprise wifi features but just want to buy some 10$ card from walmart and plug it into their computer and then wonder why performance blows, etc.. If you want good wifi - then set it up!! Using correct hardware.

sunghost

Your absolutly right with the point of buy some good hardware, but would you say this to pfsense? should i by from cisco, watchguard ….???! With this in mind, its funny how you answer...But thats not the point and yes i could buy some very good hardware, but i want to do it by myself, like i do with pfsense and not bought some expensive firewall solution...

johnpoz

There is a huge difference with wired networking.. Any OS can do routing and firewalling.. Your not doing anything yourself - someone else has done it and your clicking a gui ;)

Is this more what your looking for?
http://www.coova.org/CoovaChilli

Again still need AP.. This is just a access controller..

There is a HUGE difference between controlling how traffic uses the network vs your "dual band (IEEE 802.11n and IEEE 802.11ac)" statement.

As dok stated get yourself any wifi router and use it as an AP.. Use say the above to control access.

Guest

But i mean a system like pfsense but only for wireless

pfSense is a firewall, but for routers or wireless APs it would be the best to go with DD-WRT or OpenWRT
like named before this are the most common router operating systems out there.

If you really like to have a firewall that is better capable or supporting wireless cards, you should have a look
at the Linux based ones! pfSense is FreeBSD based and BSD based operating systems, are not so really wide
supporting, as Linux do, wireless cards.

So for sure this can be also coupled or combined together pfSense as the border (WAN) Firewall and the
DD-WRT or OpenWRT for the wireless part. There are some vendors out that are working really well together
with the both *WRT systems. Netgear, Buffalo and TP-Link are offering a really wide range of routers that can
be easily turned into a WLAN AP without no problems. Also UBNT is offering a wide range of WLN APs and a
controller software able to run on a RaspBerry PI B/2.0 as a real controller appliance.

The most WLAN APs with pre installed DD-WRT or OpenWRT are stating at $30 which is not really
expensive.

our absolutly right with the point of buy some good hardware, but would you say this to pfsense?
should i by from cisco, watchguard ….???!

pfSense is able to run on Intel Atom C2x58, Xeon E3-12xxv3/4, Xeon E5-26xxv3, Xeon D-1540 systems
which are not really cheap and LANNER Inc. is offering their FW-889x appliances which comes with two
Intel Xeon E5-26xxv3 CPUs and a huge amount of ECC RAM up to 64 GB LAN Ports for several thousand
dollars or Euros.

sunghost

Thanks for your Replies. I will have a closer look to DD-WRT and OpenWRT otherwise i will buy some good hardware ;)

Guest

OpenWRT is free. Very up to date and good hardware support. Did I mention it is free?

The x86 version CC RC3 is solid. They finally pickup Intel gigabit without manually building them with buildroot. Harder to setup than pfSense but worthy. It has a nice WebGUI called Luci2.

My only complaint is they are too lean with 16MB targets.

sunghost

Thanks for that Phishfry. I will have a closer look at this. It seems that this is what iam looking for. thx