PFSense will not support older hardware?

According to this article, pfsense will not support older processors that don’t have aes-ni support starting with version 2.5. They claim that crypto use is increasing and they need the increased crypto speed. How much will it impact the community here? Thoughts?

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Since my Atom D525 does not support AES-NI, I'm affected. But luckily, I already have a suitable mobo to use. All I need is a used $40 i5 CPU off eBay and I'm golden.

Im pretty sure in 2 years when this actually gets rolled out. Most people with older hardware will be looking to upgrade or have a rig in standby that will work.

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h170 board and a skylage g4400t pentium here. probably put into service on thursday, my next day off. its replacing a sempron 145 ,that while it works admirably, does not support aes-ni. so i came across this low power pentium that does. hope to keep the whole rig to less than 40W .

I wasn't sure how fast they brought out updates, I couldn't find a release schedule or anything.

2.4 has been sitting at 70 bugs for about 6 months now. They are very big on a solid release so at this pace we are all good for a while.

It depends on what you consider old hardware. I'm using a low power 4th generation i3 that already supports aes-ni. To me, this is old hardware because it's already 3 generations out of date. I used it for a pfsense box 2 years ago because I had nothing better to do with it and it should still be fine by the time 2.5 rolls around. I'll probably have enough spare parts laying around by then to build a completely new box. I still have a pentium G3220 collecting dust, but it wouldn't be any good for future pfsense sense it doesn't support aes-ni.

I am using a socket 486 computer for pfsense since I only get 4mbps down 1 up at most. This is kind of a pain because I'll be stuck on an older version. Might have to look for a new pfsense box after 3 years of using this free one..

To the people getting hit by this you might want to check out opnsense. I personally have not used it but ill probably try it out on an old AMD E-350 box I was planning on using for pfsense.