25G SFP28 base cards / What model supported ?

[Elrick75]

Hi to all,

I need to have Quad port NIC card that with 25Gb SFP28 port.
I have a constraint, one of the 4 ports will have to be used in 10Gb SFP+, I think the cards are retro compatible?
What model is compliant and works fine with pfSense 2.7 please?

Many thanks for you help.

[rcoleman-netgate]

@Elrick75 Look for NICs with FreeBSD 14 support.

[stephenw10]

There was a recent report of success with a Mellanox NIC.
https://forum.netgate.com/topic/182079/help-with-25g-speeds-on-ha-pfsense-routers-lacp-using-mellanox-connectx-5-nic

[Elrick75]

@stephenw10 The problem is that it is only double port, i need quad ;)

[stephenw10]

As far as I'm aware you could never use the bandwidth offered by 4 25G ports. What exactly are you wanting to do with it?

[Elrick75]

@stephenw10 said in 25G SFP28 base cards / What model supported ?:

red by 4 25G ports. What exactly are you wanting to do with it?

I have three VLAN allowed to go to internet, that why i need quad port card.
I don't want to make trunk, just VLAN by port.

[planedrop]

@Elrick75 Any specific reason why a trunk wouldn't work/isn't ideal?

[tman222]

Intel E800 series (ice driver) and Chelsio T6 (cxgbe driver) should also work. A quick search revealed that here are some 4 port 25Gbit SFP28 cards out there based on the Intel E810 chipset. Another option might be a single/dual port 100Gbit card and then using the port as the trunk port for all the VLANs.

Hope this helps.

[stephenw10]

So you need to have 1 WAN and 3 LANs all connected at 25Gbps?

Yeah I would also question why you cannot use VLANs for that.

[tman222]

I should mention if you actually plan to route between these VLANs at line speed (25Gbit), I would either take a look at TNSR or having a Layer 3 switch do the work.

[planedrop]

@tman222 yeah this 100%, if you want more than roughly 10 gig I think TNSR starts to make sense, but def after 25 gig.

[Elrick75]

@tman222 I dunno what is TNSR ?! What would be the connection diagram in this case? Does this mean I have one more piece of equipment?

[planedrop]

@Elrick75 TNSR is another routing product from Netgate, it's primarily a high speed router. You could run it separate or use it as the only thing but it's less capable feature wise than pfSense and is really meant as a high speed routing device.

[stephenw10]

If you need to actually route 25Gbps you have a much better chance of achieving that using TNSR. You'll notice how everyone on that other thread was surprised the OP there managed it using pfSense.

Yes, if you used VLANs over a single 25G link you would need to connect that to a 25G capable switch to separate it for hosts on each.

Steve