Wireless is intermittent at best
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I have no such bad experiences. I use Advantech ARK embededed PC's and they have no such issues with Atheros AR9380/AR5BXB112 modules.. I really think TP Link adapters have some issues..
At home i am using Lanner FW7520 with SR71-15 which works without any problems whatsover… -
Get an access point.
ok, but why? Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of building a pfsense box?
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ok, but why?
So that you get wifi that is NOT "intermittent at best".
Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of building a pfsense box?
No, not at all. The AP (properly configured) does the wifi part and nothing else.
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valid point. any suggestions for a quality AP that won't break the bank?
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I'm going to subscribe to this thread as well. I've put up with patchy wifi for too long, hoping 2.2 would improve it but I still have issues. One thing I do do is use my internal wifi interface to serve fixed IPs to various devices from the DHCP server and then filter those IPs through squidguard and firewall rules differently. So moving to an external AP I imagine that would be more difficult.
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In answer to my own question I installed dd-wrt on an old netgear wg602 v3 access point, set it up through my managed switch and configured it the same as my internal interface. Easy. Time will tell how it performs. It's only 802.11g but speed hasn't been my problem, establishing connections has.
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The purpose of using pfsense is to get a powerful firewall/router not wireless AP. I never understood why people think everything should be in 1 box.. More often then not the place where it makes most sense to place your edge router/firewall is nowhere close to where it makes most sense for a AP.
Why would anyone think that the wireless cards/usb sticks make good AP even if in a good location? Yes you can leverage any old soho wifi router you might having laying around from before you moved to pfsense. And sure those can be used.. But why not get a real AP, you got yourself a "real" router/firewall with pfsense why would you want some lame as wifi router as your AP? ;)
Unifi gets good reviews and lots of pfsense users are using them - the entry level model is only $70 - place a few of those strategically around your location and your good to go. POE – put them in the ceiling where an AP belongs ;)
There are also other options, many lower budget AP can be had, or used, etc..
https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap/ -
I use pfsense as a SOHO all-in-one router so inbuilt AP would be great but the external AP seems to be a better idea. Thanks for the unifi link, they look worth a try.
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The purpose of using pfsense is to get a powerful firewall/router not wireless AP. I never understood why people think everything should be in 1 box..
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it may be different in different countries, but here in northern Europe, broadband providers send their customers an all-in-one WAN/LAN/WIFI box, with manufacturer (Inteno, Thomson, D-Link, whatever) embedded software for LAN and WIFI access and routing.
In many cases, specially one-floor apartments, it's enough for WIFI.
The idea is then, to replace or duplicate, a providers one-in-all iron with your own, with the assumption that a Unix-like OS has all the capabilities to do the job.
The 1-box idea is the default among ISP.
Before Wifi was there, people often put a custom BSD/Linux router between them and the ISP modem. When Wifi was generalized, it was just a natural idea to add the functionality. -
I see that pfSense is rather a fork, ie. slightly different kernel code, than a configuration GUI.
My experience with vanilla FreeBSD, is that, IF the wireless drivers works correctly, the OS runs simultaneously ethernet and wifi PF very graciously.
I have tried pfSense because I was interested in an easy GUI tool rather than writing configurations in CL. With my USB wireless cards, pfSense crashes. I downloaded the code, but it's quite patched, so I went back to FreeBSD CL, ans a bit later, I found about OPNSense. That one is more simply a GUI on top of FreeBSD, and it's working nicely. Now, it's about my particular wifi dongles, but then if I have troubles, it's easier to investigate in FreeBSD with it's big developer's community and simple kernel source configuration process than in patched pfSense code. So far FreeBSD/OPNSense is working with my hardware, but not pfSense.
See here:
https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=94363.0
Any visitors I have do connect their phones, tablets, laptops without troubles.
In fact my custom FreeBSD (now OPNSense) router performs BETTER than my ISP Inteno box, wirelessly, when a lot of devices are connected. -
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If you want to add wifi hardware to your pfSense box stick to Atheros hardware for least issues and try to use older hardware that is more likely to be supported.
I have personally used two different Atheros cards in pfSense and they both worked well enough. However I also have a separate AP (just one currently) because, as johnpoz said, my pfSense box is located conveniently for my incoming WAN connections and not for wireless coverage.Steve
