In June 2016, Amazon announced Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) on Amazon Web Services (AWS). ENA allows customers to dynamically shift between 1 Gbps, 10 Gbps, or 25 Gbps network adapter sizes fronting larger EC2 instances. This enables customers to accommodate anticipated or realized traffic spikes associated with a new product launch, product promotion, special event, etc.

With Amazon’s ENA launch, drivers were only available for Linux and Intel® Data Plane Development Kit (Intel® DPDK). Microsoft® Windows drivers became available shortly after. Recently, ENA driver support was added for FreeBSD.

With the FreeBSD drivers now available, customers running pfSense® 2.4.1 (or higher) on AWS can take advantage of ENA.

Earlier versions of pfSense Firewall/VPN/Router can be updated to 2.4.1 through the pfSense dashboard. Alternatively, a new 2.4.1 instance of pfSense Firewall/VPN/Router from Netgate can be initiated.

Complete instructions for enabling AWS ENA features are available in the Netgate AWS documentation.