WiFi Accesspoint… pointers
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My pfsense and general networking knowledge isn't spitzenklasse, but I am mostly quite able to follow directions.
I've trawled these forums and the available documentation but I still feel I could use some tips from the more informed part of this community.
I have a fairly new box of retail hardware with pfsense very successfully installed. It's got more performance than it needs, I guess; dual core celeron, 1gig ram, 2 intel gig nics.
As far as cabled network is concerned it performs excellently, but I have some issues with a Linksys WAP54G accesspoint.
The AP is connected to a switch which is connected to the LAN interface. The DHCP server is turned off on the AP, pfsense takes care of that and gives both the AP and all machines ip addresses.
Bandwidth is unhindered and works as it should, but it takes a long time to load webpages on machines connected to the AP. I don't know why, obviously, but in effect is looks like DNS lookups take a long time. When I connect the same machines to a cable the latency disappears. Earlier I had the same AP connected to a cheap D-Link router without any long webpage loadtimes.I've tried to go through the AP settings without finding anything conspicuous, again, here my knowledge isn't helping much. Could there be some compability issues between the AP and pfsense? Is there some obvious settings I need to change in the AP and/or pfsense?
Is it less than optimal (performancewise) to have the AP connected to the LAN interface? I have ordered a new nic to play with the AP connected directly to the pfsense box. I'm a bit unsure with all this subnet and bridging stuff, but that should be easy enough to find info on.
I wanted to get a wireless nic and let the pfsense box do it all. My pfsense box is SFF that only takes low profile bracket cards. I went through the compability list and even went through the atheros list linked there, but I didn't find a single low profile wireless card that sported a compatible chip, well easily available in my country at least.
If all else fails I could try to get a new AP and hope that all issues will disappear. I'm thinking there is a logical a explanation for the perceived latency issues and I want to try to sort that out before using money on another AP.
Those of you that know these things… What would the ideal setup be? Are there some obvious settings in the AP or pfsense I need to check?
Any pointers would be appreciated!