Suggestion regarding WLAN drivers
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Hello,
out of my own experience I would like to suggest a change in the way drivers are updated or regressed in pfsense updates.
First I had some bad experiences with Ralink cards, where the card would first work fine, but after an upgrade simply didn't. I have the same experience now with my Atheros card, in 1.2.3RC2 it worked, now in the latest release candidate it stops working after 20 minutes or so until I reboot the pfsense box. After reading some forum posts apparently some driver regression had taken place.
Although I know we are talking about release candidate versions in some cases, I think it would be great if somehow driver versions are more visible. Perhaps in somewhere in the webadmin interface (at least I haven't info about that in the webmin console).
I don't know if it would be feasible to let the admin choose driver versions at install time? Or in the webmin interface? As I understand it a driver update sometimes solves problems for some, and breaks stuff for others. So letting the admin choose could possibly solve a lot of these problems/frustrations.
Best regards,
Jan
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The driver versions are what is included in the underlying FreeBSD release used. RC1-RC2 was 7.1, RC3 and release are 7.2. There is no way to change out or pick and choose drivers, so what's included is what you get. We don't change drivers at all generally, there are rare exceptions, in 1.2.3-release they're all stock.
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Ok, I understand.
It's a pity though that the wireless stability leaves a lot to be desired with the latest releases. At least that's my personal experience.
I used to use Ralink cards, but I read that Atheros based cards were better, and changed to an Atheros based wireless nic.In a sense it works great for regular surfing, but I can't for example download a 600MB file over my wireless connection (antenna is only two meters away from my client) because it seems when there is 'a lot' of traffic my wireless connection resets itself. So my download gets interrupted every time.