freebsd-wifi-build, or "wait, you can run freebsd on atheros MIPS access points? where do I get that?"

I've been running FreeBSD at home as my primary internet/wifi access for a few years now. It's cheap, it's easy to do, and I've tried very hard to wrap up the whole process into a mostly-simple build system that spits out a useful image to use.

It's pretty simple in concept - I take FreeBSD-HEAD, build it with some cut-down options, create a custom filesystem image with some custom boot scripts and a custom configuration file, and provide an image that you can TFTP (using a serial console and ethernet cable) or upload directly to the AP if it supports it.

The supported hardware list is here:

https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-wifi-build/wiki/Supported-Boards

Now, it's not a huge list like OpenWRT, but that's mostly because I don't have an infinite supply of Atheros MIPS based routers. I think I'll get some of the TP-Link Archer series stuff next.

Building it is pretty simple:

https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-wifi-build/wiki

You checkout the build repo, check out FreeBSD-HEAD, install a couple of packages, and run the build for your board. Once it's done, the images for your board appear in ../tftpboot/. There's a wiki page for each of the supported boards with a walkthrough with how to get FreeBSD going on it.

It comes up on 192.168.1.20/24 with 'user' and 'root' users, with no password. So, the first thing you should do after installation is telnet in, configure /etc/cfg/rc.conf with your actual LAN IPs, set the user/root passwords, and then 'cfg_save' to save things. Then, reboot and voila!

The configuration file format looks like FreeBSD but it isn't. I'm keeping it somewhat hierarchical-looking in naming but flat in implementation so I can migrate it to something like a sqlite or luci backend in the future.

https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-wifi-build/wiki/Config-Overview

It's good enough for me to be able to set up an AP to be a bridge with a management IP address and configure the ethernet switch. Others have added ipfw support to do NAT and firewalling - I'm going to add configuration rules for NAT, IPFW and routing soon so it's all integrated.

It's FreeBSD, all the way through:

$ uname -a
FreeBSD tl-wdr3600 11.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 11.0-CURRENT #0 r282406M: Wed May  6 22:27:16 PDT 2015     adrian@lucy-11i386:/usr/home/adrian/work/freebsd/head-embedded/obj/mips/mips.mips/usr/home/adrian/work/freebsd/head-embedded/src/sys/TL-WDR4300  mips
$ ifconfig wlan0 list sta
ADDR               AID CHAN RATE RSSI IDLE  TXSEQ  RXSEQ CAPS FLAG   
18:ee:69:15:f4:12    2    1  26M 37.0   45   2703  51888 EPS  AQEHTRM RSN HTCAP WME
04:e5:36:0d:1b:0d    1    1  19M 23.0   15   1524  47072 EPS  AQEPHTR RSN HTCAP WME
cc:3a:61:0e:33:a0    3    1  19M 32.0   30   2585  43072 EPS  AQEPHTR RSN HTCAP WME
40:0e:85:1a:f1:69    4    1  19M 25.0   30   1138  54800 EPS  AQEPHTR RSN HTCAP WME
00:0f:13:97:14:54    5    1  54M 30.0   45   1808  57424 EPS  AE      RSN
00:22:fa:c2:d1:20    6    1  26M 24.5    0    574  57776 EPS  AQEHTRS RSN HTCAP WME

So if you'd like a FreeBSD based device to act as your home gateway, this is where you can start. It's not pfsense, but it's designed to run on things much smaller than pfsense supports and it's a good introduction into the world of FreeBSD embedded.