@olivierlambert I
Hello!
I apologize for the long silence. Major medical and system hardware problems came up and had to be dealt with.
I now have what I consider to be a very stable v8.3 install. I can report that the base i40 driver does not work with Intel x710 v9.54 firmware. In pfSense's console, both interfaces are report as active but there is no traffic flow, no response to a ping request, and the GUI is unavailable.
I installed the alternate drive with both interfaces reported as active but again there is no traffic on the WAN interface. The LAN interface is ping-able and the GUI available.
At this point I feel my option is to build the driver from source. As I am not a developer I asked (don't laugh) ChatGPT for a recipe. The installed kernel is 4.19.0+1 and ChatGPT claims 4.19.19-8.0.38.2.xcpng8.3 is the development kernel and is installed.
Your input would be greatly appreciated.
Best regard