Support for USB wifi adapters

pachi

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?

Gertjan

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.

stephenw10

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/usbdevs

Steve

pachi

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?

Grimson

@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.

pachi

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.

Grimson

@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.

stephenw10

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

johnpoz

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..