[nycbug-talk] T1 cards and PFSense

[Chris Buechler]

Okan Demirmen wrote:
> i'm sorry, but bugging hardware vendors for hardware for GUI
> applications is a waste, imho.  the device drivers already exist.
>   

Depends on the vendor's point of view - if it's supported in the PFSense 
GUI, is the project used by enough businesses around the world willing 
to spend the money to buy the cards that it's worth their effort? The 
answer is almost certainly yes, based on frequency of past requests for 
this and the large and growing popularity of the project, but it depends 
on how they feel about it. 95% of PFSense users don't see it as FreeBSD, 
they see it as a firewall distro, and if it doesn't support something in 
the GUI it makes no difference to them whether it's because there isn't 
a driver, or the GUI support isn't written - it won't work, it's not 
supported, they're not going to buy the hardware.
 
Since the developers have no personal need for such support, if the 
vendor doesn't care enough to help us support their hardware, we don't 
care enough to support it. All our developers have pretty decent test 
environments, and the 4 biggest contributors have several thousand 
dollars worth of equipment because there are plenty of hardware vendors 
willing to contribute to the project. They continue to do so, so it must 
be paying off for them.
 
There's plenty of work in the project, as far as new features go, that 
we have a personal interest in doing. Anything outside that requires an 
external influence - hardware, money, or both. That approach has worked 
out well for us thus far, our developers make at least a pittance for 
their efforts through some paid development work, and we have pretty 
impressive home network setups. This is great for everyone involved, 
especially the community as a whole because it helps keep us motivated, 
and everybody benefits from the development.
 
But for this, I'm not sure if there's enough developer interest to make 
it happen, even if given the hardware. It depends entirely on how time 
consuming it would be. Max - Scott and I will have to get together with 
you at BSDCan to discuss with the Sangoma developer. If it's easy to 
implement, and they can get me a card I can test with a crossover 
between it and a Cisco router, it shouldn't be a problem to implement I 
don't believe. But that's mostly up to Scott as he'd be doing the 
development work. I would be willing to do all the testing, and have the 
Cisco equipment to act as the other end of the T1.

Cheers,
-Chris