Maximum number of physical interface for PfSense

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Hi to all,

how many physical interface can support PfSense???

Regards,

[Klaws]

I am not aware of any limit.

http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,10465.0.html

I've heard of one person using 24 hardware ports without problems.

Of course, don't expect full line speed on all ports simultanously if you plug in 24 GbE NICs. If you need an "inner firewall" capable of routing GbE (or even 10GbE), you should consider to use multiple boxes.

If your bandwidth demands are much lower, you can also VLANs. One NIC can transport 4096 VLAN, which can then be separated into "real LANs" by VLAN-switches.

[stephenw10]

It's limited only by hardware resources. If you're using PCI-e cards then probably only by the number of physical slots. If you need a very large number of interfaces you can use VLANs with a suitable switch. People have pfSense installed with 1000's of interfaces using VLANs.

How many are you wanting?

Steve

Edit: That post (link above) is quite old and FreeBSD has moved on since then. I have 10 NICs in one box and haven't seen any problems.

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@stephenw10:

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How many are you wanting?

Steve

Edit: That post (link above) is quite old and FreeBSD has moved on since then. I have 10 NICs in one box and haven't seen any problems.

Hi,
thanks for the reply…
my goal is to have from 15 to 20 of physical NIC over a PfSense (in CARP configuration, so the total amount of interface is about 30-40).

Thanks in advance.

[jimp]

That should be fine for the OS, assuming your hardware is capable of using those effectively.

We have people running with hundreds of VLAN interfaces or other virtual interfaces and it's OK that way, the only question there is your hardware.