DIY Wireless Router

[TheNite]

Does anyone have experience building their own wireless router using pfsence or using a ALIX Board. i have some spare cpus on my hand i thought i might put them to use and im tired of all this consumer crap product that can't handle what i do

 

[rufee]

Its pretty simple you just throw some pci/pci-e cards into a board and install pfSense, most NIC's are supported, setup is pretty straight forward.

The problem with making a wireless pf box is that its big and not very portable, so without using external antennas wi-fi range could suffer, though id trade that out any day for more raw routing power.

[TheNite]

Its pretty simple you just throw some pci/pci-e cards into a board and install pfSense, most NIC's are supported, setup is pretty straight forward.

The problem with making a wireless pf box is that its big and not very portable, so without using external antennas wi-fi range could suffer, though id trade that out any day for more raw routing power.

 

agree about the more raw routing power, have you you done anything with pfsence? 

[rufee]

Ive looked around, watched videos about it, but i haven't done anything with it don't have a machine to spare for it, if i did thats what i would go for.

[Sheldon]

Go for it. There is a lot you can do with pfsense. 

[TheNite]

I'm going to do it then post the process of everything, things that worked And what didn't work

[Gob]

I built a pfsense box out of an old laptop (had to find a compatible usb nic). The software is fantastic, and handles heavily loads perfectly, with very little configuration. The only thing I would watch out for IS nic compatibility. Not everything will work, and there is a nic compatiblity list (note that it provides the actual nic chipset names, not their brand implementation).

 

In terms of wireless nics, you will need to make sure they are capable of AP mode, and that it will have enough output power to reach your devices.Furthermore, I couldn't find any wireless N nics that pfsense supported (only G speeds). You can use a wireless N router as a DHCP forwarder to your pfsense box (as I did). This basically turns the router into a wireless HUB, but pushes the heavy lifting to pfsense (DHCP leasing, arp tables, routing, etc) .

[TheNite]

I built a pfsense box out of an old laptop (had to find a compatible usb nic). The software is fantastic, and handles heavily loads perfectly, with very little configuration. The only thing I would watch out for IS nic compatibility. Not everything will work, and there is a nic compatiblity list (note that it provides the actual nic chipset names, not their brand implementation).

 

In terms of wireless nics, you will need to make sure they are capable of AP mode, and that it will have enough output power to reach your devices.Furthermore, I couldn't find any wireless N nics that pfsense supported (only G speeds). You can use a wireless N router as a DHCP forwarder to your pfsense box (as I did). This basically turns the router into a wireless HUB, but pushes the heavy lifting to pfsense (DHCP leasing, arp tables, routing, etc) .

 

yeah thanks bro, i was looking into their compability list and i didn't want to go in blind and then spend money for no reason, the pfsence box is going to also run virtual machines.... testing some stuff out before going any futher and actually building a dedicated box, and doing some research but if you have any dislike that you have with pfsence or anything you wish it did let me know