I am building a pfsense router and am looking for options to make it wireless. I have an Asus M2N68-AM SE2 motherboard with an AMD athelon 64 processor. I know I need a dual port gigabit NIC, but what do I need to make it wireless. I know getting an access point is one solution but that is quite expensive. I don't want to spend too much money on this, under $150, for the dual port gigabit NIC and the wireless solution. Your advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Start here.
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Supported_Wireless_Cards
Wireless cards in FreeBSD has been.... difficult, if you don't have the exact WiFi chipset that's supported.
Also, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11cF4UoNL68Me5ZC6qhjFPmzdW7mib56dBIAKz30Qpug/edit?hl=en#gid=0
Thanks for the quick reply. I guess I have to just get a gigabit NIC and access point. I am thinking about getting this:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833166096&cm_re=dual_port_gigabit_nic-_-33-166-096-_-Product
Any suggestions on access points or routers that would work well for a small house with 8 connected devices?
yeah dedicated access point is way easier. A little more expensive though but you get better performance and less headaches.
Pretty much any access point that is either 802.11/n or 802.11/ac with dual-band should be fine for 8 devices. Even some wireless routers that are regarded to be fairly weak do a pretty good as just access points with the routing disabled and are generally much more stable in this configuration because they are effectively just a wireless switch at this point.
I use a Unifi AP AC LITE with my pfSense box, it is a bit on the expensive side but I have around 20 wireless devices in my house and had issues mostly with signal strength on 5GHz with the 802.11/n router my ISP provided and haven't had issues since switching. I've also heard that the TP-LINK Archer C2 is a pretty good access point when you disable routing and use it with pfSense and should be much cheaper than the Unifi device I have.
I have an older Ubiquiti AC access point, I can't recommend them enough. They may be a little more expensive (the new ones are pretty cheap comparatively) but in my opinion they are worth the money and you won't regret buying one.
heard good things about this one
@adamniazi you could repurpose your old router as a access point until you buy the better one
Thanks for the advice guys, I think I'm going to get the Ubiquiti Networks UniFi AC Lite AP Enterprise Wi-Fi System. I can't use my old router because it keeps disconnecting and reconnecting randomly, and its becoming more frequent. As for the card I have chosen, is that okay as I have not been able to find any reviews about the card specifically but the manufacturer seems to have a decent rating.
I would look for an intel pro 1000 PT card on ebay, you can get them for the same price or cheaper and they definitely work well.
I dont think the motherboard I have has a slot that will support this card. The slots I have are PCIe x16/PCIe x1/PCI slots
It will fit fine in an x16 slot, I have several in different systems.
I mean, you're probably going to use the x16 slot for a video card but what you can do is have a video card in to set it up, set the onboard NIC as the LAN interface, then once it's installed take the video card out and put the network card in. Then configure it through the webui. It's a bit of a pain but it's straight forward enough (this is how I have my pfsense box)
Alternatively you can just get a couple of single port cards if you have enough x1 slots. But I wouldn't trust a dual port NIC with a x1 connector, not to mention that there's a review on there saying that these cards have locked up a bunch of firewalls.
Having said that it might be fine but I'm not sure, unless you know the actual chipset it uses and how well it works on pfsense there's no way of knowing if it's going to work properly or not.
Thanks for the tip, I didn't know one could install a card that has fewer pins in the slot that can accommodate more pins.
It works the other way too as long as the slot is open at the back, just runs at a lower speed.
Awesome, thanks for all your help. The parts have been ordered, I'll probably be asking a lot of questions on the software side as well. This is my first hardware build, that is why my questions probably seem very rookie. I'm actually doing it to conduct a heuristics evaluations and a cognitive walk-through for a usable security course I am taking in school.