PfSync Interface - One NIC Short

inzanez · Jul 28, 2016, 1:06 PM

Hi

I'm just planning to move parts of a network to 10Gig using SFP+ switches and cards on the pfSense nodes. As the SFP+ card does not support 4 interfaces, but only 2 of them, I will need the two onboard NICs as a link in another network. That leaves me with an SFP+ connection into network A, and a 1Gbit connection into network B. No interface available for pfSync.

Now I thought: Why not use the SFP+ interface for the pfSync? I know it's recommended to use a dedicated interface, and I've never done anything else. The only reason that thought came up is that latency will be very low with SFP+ anyway, and there's 10Gbit of throughput, and I have no other option currently…

Anybody ever tested something similar?

jimp · Aug 2, 2016, 7:52 PM

As long as you can get a link from node to node it should work. Otherwise you might have to run it through a switch on an isolated VLAN. At heart, not that much different than any other NIC except for the physical connections.