SG-2440 factory firmware not available without Gold subscription?
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I have been a very happy SG-2440 owner for over a year, and have no complaints about the device.
I am however a bit confused about the policy on restricting access to factory images only to owners with active Gold subscriptions. I would expect that if you own official PfSense supported hardware, you should have access to the latest factory image, without the need for a Gold subscription.
I know there are optimizations in the factory image, and it doesn't seem fair to lose access to hardware optimized firmware for a current model device. If someone chooses to do a clean install or needs to do a reinstall for whatever reason after a year, it seems like your only choice is to use the CE image, and lose these optimizations.
I am open to the possibility that I am confused and this is not the policy of pfSense. I would love to be wrong here. If it is the policy, I would hope they would reconsider.
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You should register your device at the portal. Then you gain access to the tuned files.
Don't know if that expires, though.Do you have a backup of your config.xml?
AFAIK all the tuning is done via parameters available through the GUI.
If you install a Community Edition and apply your config then everything tuned should be there again.Correct me if I'm wrong!
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You get access to the firmware by registering the device, it is not tied to a Gold Subscription.
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Hi Jim, thanks for replying.
After the year anniversary of my SG-2440 purchase, I lost access to the memstick factory images in the pfSense portal.
I opened a ticked and received this response from support:
"We restrict the factory image downloads to match the active support time of the device. An active gold subscription doesn't allow access to the factory images. Purchasing an SG series device will give you 2 software support incidents (after registering the serial #) and will grant access to the factory images for as long as that subscription is active. Our current policy, unfortunately, doesn't allow for inactive support members to have access to the factory images."
I would expect that I would have access to the same level of firmware, even without a support agreement for the supported life of the device. For this particular unit, I use for my home network and don't require a support contract. It doesn't seem right to have to go down to CE on an SG-2440 if I choose to do a clean install in the future.
I appreciate your assistance,
Marco
