FreeBSD Wi-Fi IPsec easy-setup guide

An IPsec tunneling connection was set up between a MS-Windows host with wireless Ethernet and a FreeBSD NAT gateway. This setup allowed the mobile host to have a secure and encrypted connection over an inherently insecure wifi radio network. Recently I have purchased a "Wireless Bundle", consisting of a wireless NAT router and a PCMCIA 802.11b card, for not a lot of money (I love cheap hardware). Being a consumer device, it was very easy to set up and to get it working with my existing home LAN. But difficulties arose when I tried to secure the connection, and also when I tried to protect the rest of my LAN from any intrusion through the wireless access point.

The choice of IPsec over WEP was for me obvious. Besides WEP being insecure (secret key can be recovered easily), my PCMCIA card had a buggy firmware, which kept dropping connections when WEP was turned on. The problem was well documented on various web boards and the manufacturer had no updates to fix the problem (I hate cheap hardware). As such, I was left with a superior, but harder to setup, choice.

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