is an open source firewall solution that can be used at home, at school or in a company (see our with hardware recommendations). In most cases you don’t want to connect clients exclusively via network cable, but also wirelessly. The easiest way is to connect a WLAN access point to the firewall that takes care of the wireless devices (e.g. smartphones). PfSense install guide Setup It is well known that a picture says more than 1000 words: The pfSense LAN interface is connected to a switch to which the access point and other wired clients can be connected. Setting up an Access Point After the access point is connected (in our example an access point from ) (like ), it still has to be set up. Each access point usually also comes with a web interface that you can use to make settings. The IP address of the access point can be found in pfSense under . tp-link this one Status → DHCP-Leases Now you can access the web interface of the access point. After login (tp-link’s default username and password is ) you can configure all important settings under : admin Quick Setup Change the login account → Yes (set new username and password) Please select the proper operation mode according to your needs → Access Point Access AP Mode Settings Wireless Network Name(SSID) → WLAN network name Channel → Auto Wireless Security Mode → WPA2-PSK Wireless Password → WLAN Password Type → Static IP IP Address → select an IP address from the LAN, e.g. 10.10.10.253 DHCP Server → Disable (Since pfSense takes care of the IP addresses). Conclusion Although there are also mini computers and routers for pfSense that come with a WLAN chip, very few of them can be operated in access point mode. In most cases, they only support client mode so that you can connect to a WLAN network, but you can’t create one yourself. PfSense only supports a few cards in access point mode. An overview can be found . Finally, IMHO it is much easier to connect an access point to pfSense instead of finding the right WLAN chip. here Originally published at openschoolsolutions.org .
