Any USB wireless device for pfsense?

[Master One]

I was just thinking about using a mini-ITX machine for running pfsense as combined firewall router and wireless access point, but the intended mini-ITX mainboard does dot have any more available PCI slot, so the only possibility to connect a wireless device would be via USB.

Does anybody know, if there is any USB WLAN device, which allows connection of a reasonable antenna, and works without hassle with pfsense?

[Master One]

Nobody ever thought about that?

I thought, that if you have no PCI slot available, and also no PCMCIA-cardreader, USB would be the only option.

Or would it be better to use use a separate consumer AP? That solution could be cheap when purchasing, but I was hoping for a one-in-all solution with the lowest power consumption. I would also be not so sure about how to secure a separate AP in conjunction with a pfSense machine (I guess the only way would be to connect it to it's own ethernet port on the pfSense machine, which means I would need a PCI network-adapter with 2 ethernet ports, since the intended mini-ITX board only has one 10/100 ethernet port onboard, and only one PCI slot available).

Any ideas highly appreciated.

[Cry Havok]

Have you looked at the HCL?

[Master One]

@Cry:

Have you looked at the HCL?

Looks like I have no clue, so what does "HCL" mean?

[GruensFroeschli]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HCL

–> Hardware Compatibility List

Recently i came across a cheap accesspoint that had VLAN-support.
As far as i can remember it was a D-Link.
With this you could add a VLAN to your one ethernetport and connect the Access-Point there.

[Master One]

@GruensFroeschli:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HCL –> Hardware Compatibility List

Oh, silly me… ;)

@GruensFroeschli:

Recently i came across a cheap accesspoint that had VLAN-support. As far as i can remember it was a D-Link. With this you could add a VLAN to your one ethernetport and connect the Access-Point there.

Thanks for the info, but nevertheless I still was hoping for an all-in-one solution, so something  based on USB, which can be connected to the pfSense machine directly. If there is none, I'll have to go with such a separate AP, I guess.

[Cry Havok]

@Master:

Thanks for the info, but nevertheless I still was hoping for an all-in-one solution, so something  based on USB, which can be connected to the pfSense machine directly. If there is none, I'll have to go with such a separate AP, I guess.

Have you looked at the section titled "3.6 Wireless Network Interfaces" in the HCL?  It lists a number of supported chipsets.  It is entirely possible however that there is, as yet, no 802.11 USB support yet.

[Master One]

Found something (didn't explicitely search for it, but just stumbled over it by accident in another forum): rum

Unfortunately it has not (yet) been backported from FreeBSD 7-current.