General Questions

Hey guys,
Having a minor issue..I'll try and be brief/specific.  I have a Netgate m1n1wall router
http://store.netgate.com/Netgate-m1n1wall-2D3-2D13-Red-P218.aspx
with a mini-wireless card:
http://store.netgate.com/KIT-5004MP-245-DUAL-P178.aspx

I have m0n0wall 1.33 setup with captive portal, traffic shaper all of which are running great.  When I enable WPA or WPA2 or both, using any combination of settings, the wifi becomes inaccessible.  I can still see the AP on any device (Macbook, iPhone, PC) but none of them can connect, they all just say invalid/incorrect password when trying to connect to it.  It runs great with no security selected..and its incredibly stable.

I am relatively new to m0n0wall, but I have learned quite a lot thus far.  Any help with this issue will be appreciated, and I will do my best to provide any information that may help here.

anyone?

Am I just asking this the wrong way?  Or is this forum dead?

Looks like you are asking well, better than many do

The forum is alive and read, but apparently those reading have no answer for you.

I can't speak for the rest of us, but my wireless setup uses an AP plugged into my network switch, not a card within the m0n0wall device itself. This avoids all sorts of problems, as m0n0wall doesn't need to support the AP directly and the AP doesn't need to know anything about m0n0wall.

Fred, I have seen the written a couple of times in the forums of both pfsense and m0n0wall.  And I get it to a certain extent, its the easiest thing to do.  But I am looking for a solid single unit solution.  Something that is self contained, that I can deploy easily in small spaces without the necessity for the purchase and power of 2 separate devices.

Is m0n0wall or pfsense just not the right solution for someone looking for a good wireless hotspot solution?

I think m0n0wall and pfsense are good solutions. But support for wireless cards seems to be well behind that of ethernet cards. I'm pretty sure this isn't the fault of these projects; it's the underlying FreeBSD that is lacking here. But having said that, it's not unusual for very new, very recently released hardware to have problems with older, even slightly older software. Could it be that this card is a new version and the older version works?

It does seem odd that Netgate sells that router box and wireless card while also hyping m0n0wall and pfsense. Have you contacted Netgate yet? You can't be the only one with this problem with this combination of hardware and software.

Some possibilities. Give the new m0n0wall 1.8 development version a try. That and pfsense 2.0 are built on more current versions of FreeBSD. Perhaps the wireless card is better supported there.

I find it troubling that the card does work unsecured, but fails when the encryption is enabled. That makes it difficult to just blow this off with "it's unsupported."

I wish I could be of more help. Perhaps one of the developers will chime in.

I will try and call netgate on Monday.  I have tried pfsense 2.0, the most recent version, and it was not without problems.  Anytime I would enable default QoS settings...mobile devices (ie iphone, android, etc.) could connect, but would be completely inoperable.  Everything would timeout.

Weird right?

I have no idea but as the old IT saying goes: "If it fails - do it again from scratch."

Do a backup of Your current running configuration, then reload m0n0 from scratch and try to configure it again.
If it fails You could again reload Your old config.

As I've said before, a quite failsafe compatibility measure that I know is by using a separate AP hooked on one ethernet interface, thus getting rid of the wifi card.

PS: Wait a minute, are there any other networks or possibly malicious network devices in range? Could You try connecting in a clear area - example taking the router at some other place far enough from the previous location?