Hardware

Hello, and thanks for taking the time to look into this thread.

I have been using m0n0wall for personal use for quite sometime now and have been very happy with it. Happy enough with it that I just built a router for my place of work, and everthing works fine... except I have never been successful with getting the wireless to work... at home or work... and I know it's becuase of the version of m0n0wall I am using which is the stable verison... which is an older freebsd... with a smaller wifi driver database.

Anyways I ordered a Netgear WG311 v3 from logic supply and It doesn't support the m0n0wall 1.2* so I was wondering what people thought I should do?

And possibly give some suggestions.... anyways thanks very much. And Thanks to all the developers and people that make this work.

If you want/need to use the wireless immediately, try the 1.3 beta. You may also want to consider trying pfsense. Otherwise, you'll have to wait for the 1.3 release if you want to stick with release versions.

I find that a nice work-around for monowall's intermittent wireless support is to use some high quality ethernet NICS and then go get a highly-reconfigurable wireless access point,and set it up as a bridge...

I've gotten it to work before with a dlink dwl-2100ap....

i don't know what else works but...i think it's better than waiting for driver support.

also, you might want to check out a project called OpenWrt aka WhiteRussian.
it's a project that provide open source third part firmware OSes for many popular wireless access points and chipsets...it could come in handy.

good luck.

Ok sweet, I remember looking at pfsense... the install method with the phywrite is the same right? They have a generic pc image correct?

Hmm, what would you do? Would you first try the 1.3 of m0n0 or pfsense?

Is it possible to go to 1.3 via the m0n0 updater? Or would I have to do a completely new install to the cf card?

Haven't tried pfsense, it's pretty much the same thing correct? But they have added other features right?

I pretty much just want a really reliable router, that has the web interface and possibly wireless...

I'll look more into I guess... do you use wireless with a m0n0 based router? And if you do, what have you done and which card you went with?

Anyways thanks for the responce,

--neto

Heh while typing that I got Ventolins response, I really don't want to use an access point... but it might be a strong possibility.

O and while I'm thinking of it, what kinds of kinds of antenna could I do? Any cheap suggestions from a wifi nut on here =)

My friend was telling me of all the fun he had with the wifi and antenna's he had bought.

The standard antenna for a pci card is kind of weak right? Eh maybe it will be fine... rambling... heh.

http://www.hyperlinktech.com/web/hg2415u_pro.php
http://www.radiolabs.com/products/antennas/2.4gig/11eleyagi.php

you know you want to...

heh, seriously though, take a look at this, if this monster can't provide the range you want...maybe you really do need the first two..

http://www.radiolabs.com/products/antennas/2.4gig/2.4-desk5mini.php

cheers.

Personally... my AP's are pfsense on WRAP using Atheros miniPCI cards. I use WPA, and they work great. The wireless functionality is much more mature in pfsense than it currently is in m0n0wall, though I would expect that to even out in the future.

I'm a big advocate of both m0n0wall and pfsense, but pfsense is substantially better suited for wireless, even than the m0n0 1.3 beta releases.

Hmm, I think the reason I never tried pfsense was because I couldn't find the download for the generic pc image...

I still can't find it, can you perhaps point me in the right direction?

Thanks,

--neto

Hmm, I think the reason I never tried pfsense was because I couldn't find the download for the generic pc image...

I still can't find it, can you perhaps point me in the right direction?

If you're using CF, choose the embedded image. Otherwise grab the iso and install to the hard drive. pfsense has a full installer and installs to normal HD partitions, unlike m0n0wall which copies a small image to the HD and runs from RAM.
http://pfsense.org/mirror.php?section=downloads

Ok probably a dumb question, but isn't the embedded package made for wrap... or non x86 hardware? I do have compact flash... but it's in a intel x86 setup. Probably works ether way right?

It's one embedded image for every machine type, not platform limited like m0n0wall's releases. m0n0wall is done this way because each platform has a perfectly tuned kernel configuration for that specific piece of hardware. pfsense throws in a full kernel with all hardware support, at the expense of requiring a larger CF card (128 MB minimum).

WRAP is x86, all m0n0wall and pfsense releases for all platforms are x86.