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Reposting here after visiting Verizon Forums & Netgate Forums...

I have FiOS and the provided ONT outputs 10G via RJ45 Ethernet. I purchased a Netgate 8200 pfSense+ firewall/router appliance. I'm trying to launch an IT company that's supported by my homelab.

The 8200's fastest ports are 2 x 10G SFP+ ports. Apparently, due to some limitation on the Intel SoC this device is equipped with, it doesn't support SFP transceivers that convert copper Ethernet connections. First off, why is this the case? What is the technical boundary here preventing this from being possible?

Moreover, if Verizon doesn't offer alternative ONT modems to fix my issue, what solutions are available to me that don't involve throttling my LAN's connection speed to the WAN edge? Is there some niche device I can purchase that sits between the ONT and my firewall and takes 10G RJ45 + 10G fiber optic to bridge connection compatibility?

Thanks for any advice!

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  • I'm not sure why your LAN speed would be throttled either way? Your LAN traffic doesn't even go through this particular link, does it?
    – grawity_u1686
    Commented Mar 20 at 20:42
  • @u1686_grawity If I can't use the Netgate 8200's provided SFP+ ports, I would have to use one of its other 1G or 2.5G Ethernet ports available to connect to my ISP ONT. The ONT supports 10G Ethernet, therefore performance is left on the table for gaming & homelab/business services if I'm forced to not use the firewall's 10G SFP+ ports just because of some weird Intel NIC compatibility issue.
    – ZoshMan
    Commented Mar 20 at 21:27
  • why can't you use one of the 2 combo ports? If I may speculate, netgate would rather have people blame the SFP+ modules than their router and that the modules that work are lower power draw than the ones that don't. That would explain why the 30m module would work and not the 80
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    Commented Mar 28 at 4:17
  • Ironically this probably means cheaper modules are probably a better option here.
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    Commented Mar 28 at 4:18

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It turns out some RJ45-SFP+ transceivers do work with Intel chipset-based firewalls. https://forum.netgate.com/post/1159461

I ended up purchasing 2 transceivers from 10GTek:

  • ASF-10G-T80 as recommended
  • ASF-10G-T

Surprisingly the recommended T80 did not work/didn't get recognized by my Netgate 8200 but the regular 'T' one did! My ix0 port recognizes the transceiver as 10Gbase-SR <full-duplex,rxpause,txpause> and I've named this my WAN_FiOS interface since it's connected via CAT6a directly to my Verizon ONT.

More specifically, this from 10GTek: 10GBase-T SFP+ Transceiver, 10G T, 10G Copper, RJ-45 SFP+ CAT.6a up to 30 meters Compatible for Intel SKU: ASF-10G-T-INT

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