Connecting Pfsense To A Linksys Wireless Router

[jamrock]

Liquid and computer equipment do not mix. I have found this to be true.

Yesterday I was eating cornflakes for breakfast when my phone rang. I ran to pick up the phone and some milk fell on my Linksys wireless ethernet bridge (WET54G). Of course this killed it.

As you can see, WET is not the appropriate model number for it. But that is another story.

I use the bridge to connect my home LAN to my Linksys wireless router. The bridge has an ethernet card on one side and a wireless card on the other.

Essentially my LAN was cut off from the internet. This made me very depressed. I had no internet access and replacing the bridge would be expensive. Worse, they are hard to find.

Fortunately I remembered reading that Pfsense had drivers for wireless cards. Last night I installed a wireless card and loaded Pfsense on the Smoothwall machine. This morning I now have internet access for my LAN again. No need to purchase a wireless bridge.

You just have to love open source software. I will need to get a different wireless card, however. This one will not connect to the Linksys router when I enable WPA2. So I have temporarily disabled security on my wireless LAN to check my mail and post this. This has to be fixed soon.

Pfsense 1.2.3 is based on an older version of FreeBSD so it supports a limited range of wireless cards. Version 2.0 is to be released soon so hopefully we will see a greater level of support.

So my network is a bit simpler today. Yesterday I have a Linksys router, a Linksys bridge, Smoothwall and the LAN's ethernet switch. Today I have a Linksys router, Pfsense and the LAN's ethernet switch.

[khat17]

Get the 2.0RC and see if it will do what you want. Just do a backup of your config first.

http://blog.pfsense.org/?p=589

I need to get one of those WET54G though.

[jamrock]

I did some additional testing. The card works well with WEP. Go figure.

There is no additional functionality available with the RC for 2.0.

The Pfsense documentation lists cards that have been tested.
http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Sup...Wireless_Cards

I think I will just purchase this one. It is a mini pci card. Will this work in a regular pc?
http://store.netgate.com/-P28C26.aspx

Why do you need the WET54G? I have only seen them at Intcomex. You may have to ask your supplier to order it from them. Most suppliers don't stock them since the demand is not that great.

This exercise has taught me a lot about wireless connectivity. I knew how to configure the Linksys routers before but I didn't understand what each option did. Working with Pfsense has made me understand more about the configuration.

[juba]

I did some additional testing. The card works well with WEP.

Most older WIFI cards do not support WPA. I have devices on my home network that supports WEP only. For instance, a DLink media server, WII and a old laptop. I use DD-WRT on a Linksys WRT320n to setup multiple SSIDs; a WEP for WEP only devices and a WPA2 for all other WIFI devices.

[jamrock]

Okay... That makes sense.

[khat17]

Why do you need the WET54G?

Liquid and computer equipment do not mix.

I want one that waterproof

Most older WIFI cards do not support WPA. I have devices on my home network that supports WEP only. For instance, a DLink media server, WII and a old laptop. I use DD-WRT on a Linksys WRT320n to setup multiple SSIDs; a WEP for WEP only devices and a WPA2 for all other WIFI devices.

Agreed with this. Some devices just plain will not work with a certain security type because it doesn't support it. Check with the model of the card you have installed and see if this is the case.

[jamrock]

My network card is a Linksys WMP54G. It supports WEP and WPA2 and uses the Ralink RT61 driver. Pfsense is loading the ral0 driver which is not a perfect match for it. This driver supports other cards made by the same manufacturer.

It appears as if the rt61 driver is now in the standard Linux kernel so the card would be recognized by a standard Linux distro.

I have also been looking at Smoothwall 3.0. This version includes support for a number of wireless cards but it has no driver for my card. I have found some documentation on how to compile a driver and include it in my Smoothwall installation.

http://blog.allthingsgeek.com/index....=article&id=16

I can download the developer edition of Smoothwall 3.0. This contains the tools I need to compile additional software into Smoothwall. I can take the manufacturer's driver and configure it for Smoothwall. I can then copy the finished driver into my standard Smoothwall installation.

One should never use the developer edition as a production firewall.

I have never been one to mess with the kernel and stuff like that. Anyhow, this is a learning opportunity so I think I am going to give it a try. Once I know how to do this, I will be able to use the card of my choice with Smoothwall, as long as the manufacturer has a Linux driver for it. The down side is that I will need to recreate the driver each time I upgrade Smoothwall.

I have already learnt a lot about how drivers for network cards work on Linux and Windows. For example, I have learnt that the drivers on both Linux and Windows have the same name.

The drivers that Windows and Linux load are based on the chipset that is used on the card. It has little to do with the brand name of the card. For example, I loaded a Nexxt wireless card into a Windows XP machine. The chipset is the RTL8185L made by Realtek. XP therefore loaded the Realtek RTL8185L driver.

If you look at a network card, the name of the chipset is often visible on it.

[khat17]

Agreed. Interesting that Ralink makes the chips for the Linksys. I find that sometimes the chipset driver works better than the manufacturer driver. I guess the driver version is the reason why it's not working for you. Also - bear in mind that pfsense is based on BSD and not Linux (close though). You're sure the 2.0RC doesn't have the driver you need?

[jamrock]

Also - bear in mind that pfsense is based on BSD and not Linux (close though).

That is the real advantage of Pfsense. The BSD's are known for their paranoid approach to security.

You're sure the 2.0RC doesn't have the driver you need?

Yes. It also loads the ral0 driver.

I find that sometimes the chipset driver works better than the manufacturer driver.

Often times admins never load the driver from the manufacturer's CD. Windows or Linux automatically loads the chipset driver so there is no need to load anything else.

Interesting that Ralink makes the chips for the Linksys.

This seems to be the norm. On the Pfsense and Smoothwall forums, people complain that manufactures sometimes change the chipset of a network card. You can buy a card in 2009 with an Atheros chipset. It works with Pfsense out of the box. You buy the same model card in 2011 and it doesn't work because the manufacturer is now using the Ralink chipset.

[jamrock]

The issue has now been resolved. Pfsense 2.0 is working with WPA2 using the Linksys WMP54G wireless card. It needed to have the SSID of the wireless router in the WAN setup.

In the past, it would see the router but it would not connect to it. Once I put in the name of the SSID, it worked.

Here is some documentation that helped. Perhaps someone will find it useful.


http://addicted-to-it.blogspot.com/2...ss-access.html

http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Wireless_Details
Use the section "WPA client with AES encryption". Just choose WPA2 instead of WPA.

I have learnt a whole lot about wireless networking from this. I will get another of these cards and try to set up a wireless access point on the Pfsense box at work.

Right now I have a wireless router that people use when they come to the office with laptops. That way, they don't need to put their machines on my network. If I can get the Pfsense wireless access point to work, I will need one less device in my rack.

This is all so cool.