Wifi on pfsense router -help-
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I am thinking of turning an old sony desktop into a router. I have a network card already, all I need to know is how to get the pf sense router to broadcast wifi. What do i need? a WAN card? can someone link a good, fast one please :)
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A dedicated AP is the best option. If you insist on using wifi on pfsense get a compatible card and good luck.
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This is the hardware list for FreeBSD 11, which will be used in the (currently beta) 2.4 release of pfSense. The 2.3.x versions of pfSense use FreeBSD 10.3.
https://www.freebsd.org/relnotes/CURRENT/hardware/support.html
I took a quick look through the list and saw only ONE 802.11ac wifi card supported (it's an Intel card using the iwm(4) driver), though I don't know if pfSense is capable of configuring it to take advantage of the AC speeds. Lots of 802.11b/g/n cards listed, many a/b/g and b/g cards too.
However I also agree with tirsojrp… go with a dedicated access point. Let pfSense handle the routing and security... let a wireless access point handle the wireless.
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There are no AC cards that work in AC mode so if you need AC get an external access point.
I don't believe that Intel card will work in hostap mode (access point mode).
The best chance of everything working smoothly is to use an older Atheros based card.
https://wiki.freebsd.org/dev/ath(4)Steve
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FreeBSD (and pfSense) used to have really good and up to date support for wireless cards up until 802.11n became the defacto standard. Now the situation is that barely a handful of 802.11n cards actually work and good luck finding one that supports hostap at the same time. As mentioned 802.11ac support is only in very alpha stages and only available on 12-CURRENT.
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I never felt FreeBSD was up to date with wireless, always some steps behind. The steps grew bigger.
Knowing what FreeBSD is used for mainly it shouldn't be too big a surprise.
