Good news! The XG Firewall v18 Early Access Program (EAP) 1 firmware is available for you to download and begin testing!

In an earlier post, Chris McCormack provided information on some of the key new features in the release including the new Xstream Architecture. You can get detailed information on all the features in the release by reading our “What’s New in v18” document.

Because this is the first build of the v18 release there are a few things we’d like to bring to your attention before you download the firmware and begin testing it.

We’ve attempted to make the build as bug-free as possible, however as is the nature of early access firmware we cannot guarantee it will be. Therefore, use the firmware in production at your own discretion.

The firmware has yet to be tuned for performance. Expect to see faster speeds in future builds.

As part of the EAP we’ll continue to add additional features into future builds. You can find the features in those later builds in the "What’s New in v18” document.

Download the v18 EAP 1 Firmware

Don’t know where to get the firmware? Go to the XG Firewall v18 EAP page, fill out the online form and you’ll have access to the v18 EAP firmware download.

Getting Started

Once you’re ready to go, we’ve got some great resources to help you get started:

Things to Know Before Upgrading

Before upgrading to v18 EAP 1 from an earlier version, there are a few things to note:

You can upgrade to v18 from v17.5 MR6 or later MR versions of v17.5.

Rollback and firmware switch are supported as usual. You can roll back to v17.5 MRx if you experience any issues during the v18 EAP.

Backup and restore are supported as usual. SG Firewalls running SFOS, Cyberoam firewalls and XG Firewall backups can be restored on v18.

Due to a minimum memory requirement of 4GB of RAM, XG 85 and XG 105 models cannot upgrade to v18 and must remain on a 17.x version.

v18 firmware is not supported on Cyberoam models. However, Cyberoam firewall backups can be restored on an XG Firewall running v18.

Support Note: Please do not call the general Sophos Support Hotline for EAP issues. Troubleshooting support for EAP versions is handled solely through the online Sophos Community EAP Forums. Share Your Feedback

Communicating your experiences with the v18 EAP 1 firmware is crucial to its success, so we want to hear from you! Please share your feedback via the Sophos Community or through your XG Firewall’s feedback mechanism in the user interface.

Thank you for taking the time to test the v18 EAP 1 release. We’re excited about all the new features this release will bring to Sophos XG users and we appreciate your help making it happen!

Sincerely,

Your Sophos XG Firewall Product Team