pfSense 2.4.1 and X553 NICs (C3758 SoC)

[Kenneth]

Hi!

Isn’t pfSense 2.4(.1) based on FreeBSD 11.0 supposed to work out of the box with X553 NICs? I’m running a A2SDi-8C-HLN4F (C3758 SoC) with 4 GbE ports.

In my case pfSense does not detect any interfaces. I tried installing the driver manually but being a complete Unix noob this is an uphill battle.

Any tips or suggestions?

(Proxmox VE 5.0/5.1 detected the NICs without issue, and I could run pfSense in a VM which is what I want to do, but I had a throughput issue and I’m trying to narrow down the cause, which is why I would like to try a bare metal install)

 

[Patrick]

Hi!

Isn’t pfSense 2.4(.1) based on FreeBSD 11.0 supposed to work out of the box with X553 NICs? I’m running a A2SDi-8C-HLN4F (C3758 SoC) with 4 GbE ports.

In my case pfSense does not detect any interfaces. I tried installing the driver manually but being a complete Unix noob this is an uphill battle.

Any tips or suggestions?

(Proxmox VE 5.0/5.1 detected the NICs without issue, and I could run pfSense in a VM which is what I want to do, but I had a throughput issue and I’m trying to narrow down the cause, which is why I would like to try a bare metal install)

If you search on the forums / our Twitter you will find we tried this and it does not work. The Netgate folks are working on it targeting pfSense 2.4.3 I believe.

 

[Kenneth]

Bummer. Thanks for the info. The only threads I could search up on the forums were from before 2.4 and I thought the adoption of FreeBSD 11.0 in 2.4 would enable it.

 

[Jeggs101]

This is why FreeNAS and pfSense need to switch to Linux

 

[Kenneth]

Unrelated to the issue of X553 support in pfSense as of 2.4.1, I just wanted to post my findings regarding the throughput issue in case anyone happens to experience a similar issue. Being unable to install pfSense bare metal on my server, I instead tried a different hypervisor:

My broadband connection is 100/20 mbps. I'm running my cable modem in bridge mode. Connected directly to a PC I'm getting the advertised speeds. With pfSense running in Proxmox VE 5.0/5.1 I'm getting very slow download speeds, like 2/20 mbps instead of 100/20. With pfSense running in a VM on Windows Server 1709 I'm getting advertised speeds. So it seems it's some sort of configuration issue in Proxmox.