{"id":116,"date":"2008-11-08T13:15:58","date_gmt":"2008-11-08T13:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bishnet.net\/tim\/blog\/?p=116"},"modified":"2010-11-11T13:01:41","modified_gmt":"2010-11-11T13:01:41","slug":"freebsd-with-netgear-wg311t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bishnet.net\/tim\/blog\/2008\/11\/08\/freebsd-with-netgear-wg311t\/","title":{"rendered":"FreeBSD with Netgear WG311T"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days I wrote about my new Soekris net5501 router<\/a>. In that post I mentioned that the only thing left to sort out was the wireless card. It turned out to be simpler to do than I thought.<\/p>\n

I decided to go for a Netgear WG311T<\/a>. It’s a 802.11b\/g PCI card that’s compatible with FreeBSD through the Atheros chipset and ath driver, and it fits in the net5501<\/a> just fine. As expected I had to remove the net5501 board from the case to attach the card, but that only involved undoing a handful of screws.<\/p>\n

Getting it working on FreeBSD was trivial. I added the following lines to my kernel configuration (they’re already there in GENERIC, I believe, but I built my own kernel because of the net5501):<\/p>\n

device wlan
\ndevice wlan_ccmp
\ndevice wlan_scan_ap
\ndevice wlan_scan_sta
\ndevice wlan_xauth
\ndevice ath
\ndevice ath_hal
\ndevice ath_rate_sample<\/code><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then it was a simple case of initialising the card in \/etc\/rc.conf<\/code>:<\/p>\n

ifconfig_ath0=\"inet 1.2.3.4 netmask 255.255.255.0 ssid myssid mode 11g mediaopt hostap\"
\nipv6_ifconfig_ath0=\"1:2:3::4 prefixlen 64\"<\/code><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And I also added ath0<\/code> to rtadvd_interfaces<\/code> and dhcpd_interfaces<\/code>.<\/p>\n

With that done the final step was to configure hostapd through \/etc\/hostapd.conf<\/code>:<\/p>\n

interface=ath0
\ndebug=1
\nctrl_interface=\/var\/run\/hostapd
\nctrl_interface_group=wheel
\nssid=myssid
\ncountry_code=GB
\nwpa=2
\nwpa_passphrase=my passphrase
\nwpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
\nwpa_pairwise=CCMP<\/code><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This enables WPA2 using AES (rather than TKIP).<\/p>\n

Connecting clients was no problem. My laptop and my squeezeboxes<\/a> all connected fine.<\/p>\n

One concern I had doing this was whether a PCI wireless card would have the same signal strength as a purpose access point. I seem to be getting the same signal power from this new setup as I did from my old 3com 802.11b access point. What does that tell me? I’m not sure. I would have expected technology to have come on a bit over the years. Maybe it has, but the fact that the card is lower powered balances it out? Regardless, it covers my whole house, so it’s not an issue.<\/p>\n

So now I’m done. I’ve switched off my last piece of old equipment. My power draw has dropped significantly, the noise levels have decreased, and I’m a happy geek with a cupboard full of shiny new stuff. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How to get a Netgear WG311T to work on FreeBSD in a Soekris net5501.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[140,36,37,38,39],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-freebsd","tag-freebsd","tag-netgear","tag-wg311t","tag-wpa","tag-wpa2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t