Support for USB wifi adapters
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I would like to set up a router with a USB RTL8187 client connecting to another network's WIFI Access Point as WAN and a wired Ethernet card for LAN.
Does PFSense support the RTL8187 USB WIFI device?
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Hi,
You should rephrase that question in :
Does FreeBSD support the RTL8187 USB WIFI device?
This is a typical question for the FreeBSD support forum, or just look it up (I guess a list with supported hardware exists).
Still : the driver should be compiled into the kernel and if not, you could put them in place manually. The latter won't survive a re install of course. Upgrades : as long as the kernel stays the same : yes.pfSense uses FreeBSD 11.2 at the moment, and 12 when 2.5.0 comes out.
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Theoretically it should work: https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=urtw&apropos=0&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+11.2-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html
That supports station mode and not hostap but, unusually, that's what you want.
Check the device and vendor ID from it here:
https://github.com/pfsense/FreeBSD-src/blob/RELENG_2_4_4/sys/dev/usb/usbdevsSteve
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Thank you both for your responses. From them and from what I have learned online it seems this project might be more difficult than I thought at first. As I understand it PFSense runs on FreeBSD but that the PFSense download already has both. In other words, I do not have to first install FreeBSD and then PFSense on top of that. I see the latest version of PFSense is only 64 bit and I would need a 32 bit version so I would have to download an older version ... and I cannot find where to download it. Then I would have to see if it has the necessary driver and if not I would have to install it.
This is a bit too much for me as I am not experienced with FresBSD or Linux. I only know very little about Windows and I was hoping to find a PFSense liveCD I could test directly and learn a bit but if it is too complicated and over my head then I might give it a pass.
This is just for a home LAN with no fancy requirements.
What do you think?
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@pachi said in Support for USB wifi adapters:
I see the latest version of PFSense is only 64 bit and I would need a 32 bit version so I would have to download an older version ... and I cannot find where to download it.
32 bit is long dead, if you want to run pfSense get 64 bit capable hardware.
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Well, my computers are still running 32 bits and I was just hoping to use one for PFsense. It makes no sense for me to buy a 64 bit computer for anything and much less for a router. Maybe PFSense is a high-end product for professionals and really not suited for what I am looking for which is something extremely simple and cheap.
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@pachi said in Support for USB wifi adapters:
Well, my computers are still running 32 bits and I was just hoping to use one for PFsense. It makes no sense for me to buy a 64 bit computer for anything and much less for a router.
Then you need to look elsewhere.
@pachi said in Support for USB wifi adapters:
Maybe PFSense is a high-end product for professionals and really not suited for what I am looking for which is something extremely simple and cheap.
So something like this: https://www.linksys.com/us/p/P-E1200/ good luck and come back once you moved past the year 2000.
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Just because what you have is running 32bit doesn't mean it's not 64bit capable. What exactly were you going to install on?
Steve
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Do they even make 32 bit hardware any more for PC? Has to be YEARS and YEARS.. Is your PC like 10 some years old?
Even the PI 3 for $35 is 64 bit cpu..
