So i tried to setup a pfsense router for a private network that will have no internet connection.
Current Hardware:
1 integrated intel nic 10/100
1 PCI ethernet card 10/100 (broken-ish, Ethernet connector very flaky
1 PCI wireless G card
Pentium 4 2.4ghz HT processor
Im having just general problems getting it setup, like logging into pfsense over wifi or cant send data between devices. Any help will be much appreciated and thank you all in advance
PfSense's support of wireless is flaky anyway.
Personally PfSense is a router OS and not much more and its ideal operation is linking to a switch and there on out to the devices (or an access point for wireless).
Is it still flaky if you setup the integrated LAN as the LAN side and configure directly connected?
Nope just wireless.
Any other recommendations then pfsense? just need this for stuff like wireless file transfer and LAN games.
ClearOS and UnTangle maybe worth a look at. However they sit in a similar boat to PfSense where they are not designed to handle wireless communications. Looking for your wireless card in the supported devices list (may have to look for the cards chipset) may get you further.
If you have an old router (with wireless built in) you could connect that to the LAN side and make it function as a wireless access point.
This is the same route I ended up taking. After the first few hours of trial and error (and learning pfsense), I had a working home network w/ wifi both managed on the same DHCP pool. I'm not sure how bad it is to have both on the same pool but it works for my needs.
or you could run openwrt?
It also happens to work on x86 for many people (including me) and has a fairly modern relatively well performing kernel (compared to pfsense).
might try openwrt, if this dosent work ill just buy a router unless i can figure it out.
How have you set it up? Do you have separate LAN and WiFi interfaces or are you bridging them? Are you using the ip of the WiFi interface to access pfsense via WiFi or the LAN address?
Have you created firewall rules on the WiFi interface to allow toy to access the pfsense address or the LAN? By default only the LAN interface will have an automatic allow any to any rule so you will need to make one on the WiFi interface too.
I have the broken ethernet card as wan and the working ethernet card as lan. wifi card is setup as a optinal interface from pfsense on the local machine. I have enabled wireless card as a AP.
Did you create a firewall rule for the opt1 interface to allow any to any? If not just copy the one on the lan interface. That should at least give you access, then you can refine the rules if you need to.
no i did not i will try that at home. thank you.