Hi all,

It has been 5 months since 16.1 came out.  Since then, over 1500 commits
and 18 stable releases have continuously improved and enhanced the
project.  Since then, thousands of new users have joined.  And, since
then, our new documentation has been extended and tweaked with numerous
guides, explanations and answers to your questions.

The cumulation of these efforts is this announcement of the first release
candidate for 16.7.  Images are being provided to encourage to try these
in a fresh setting, but the config import in the installer and the GUI
work as usual so that migration is simple.  Checksums for the images can
be found below.  VGA images have been omitted to permit work on the UEFI
variant in the meantime.

https://opnsense.org/download/

The RC cycle will end in a month with the actual 16.7 release so that
early birds will not have to reinstall afterwards.  Remember: feedback
is key in this phase, feel free to contact us in any way you like and
let us make 16.7 grand together.

Here is our list of major features that were worked on since 16.1:

o SSL fingerprinting / blacklisting in the IDS/IPS
o Firewall rules category tags for easy filtering
o CPU temperature graph in system health
o Custom mirror support for firmware upgrades
o OpenVPN client-specific overrides can now be bound to selected servers
o Added RFC 4638 support (MTU > 1492 in PPPoE)
o NTP can now be disabled if required
o New category-based remote ACL support in proxy server
o ICAP configuration aded to proxy server
o Pluggable service infrastructure
o Pluggable syslog infrastructure
o Finished a full sweep of visible GUI pages for improved look and feel
o HTTPS proxy support
o Russian translations 100% completed
o NetFlow export to multiple remote destinations
o NetFlow local reporting frontend
o PPTP, L2TP and PPPoE Servers ported to MPD5
o HAProxy plugin
o Traffic shaping with CoDel / FQ-CoDel
o Firewall alias geolocation support
o Cron GUI and API
o Japanese translations 100% completed
o Dashboard revamp with multi-column support, drag and drop and mini API
o RFC 6238 (TOTP) support for two-factor authentication
o HardenedBSD ASLR implementation
o High availability page for remote service status and start/stop/restart
o API commands for remote reboot and power off
o Firmware page resume support and cron-based "nightly" updates
o opnsense-patch, the tremendously nifty patching tool
o Traffic graphs frontend has been replaced by a modern alternative
o PPTP, L2TP and PPPoE Servers are now individual plugins no longer found
  in the default installation
o Pluggable interface infrastructure
o New firewall GUI page for custom scrubbing rules (normalisation)
o Removal of proxy-based NAT reflection
o No more custom PHP modules
o FreeBSD 10.3
o Suricata 3.1


Stay safe,
Your OPNsense team

--
SHA256 (OPNsense-16.7.r1-OpenSSL-cdrom-amd64.iso.bz2) = d5db6f91221121ab2e0efb962e9aa08ec095977e733a74f4e797d81329a4a1b7
SHA256 (OPNsense-16.7.r1-OpenSSL-nano-amd64.img.bz2) = 596aa7468850a1857140bc3373650556b53bdde73fa1ac7cc639a868f4a0bcc7
SHA256 (OPNsense-16.7.r1-OpenSSL-serial-amd64.img.bz2) = c28f7eebb6b56e91152bd21dee6a741ad09732d144af05c9a5099da12961531f
SHA256 (OPNsense-16.7.r1-OpenSSL-cdrom-i386.iso.bz2) = fcac3e7aad5c09ed4f5352dc125cd00e200616bc77a47fa3ce4cf04826fc0970
SHA256 (OPNsense-16.7.r1-OpenSSL-nano-i386.img.bz2) = 6a22e438ef30f7611df835ca53b0e0087d7eda3137f41224d2ee9e0d01d9ffe4
SHA256 (OPNsense-16.7.r1-OpenSSL-serial-i386.img.bz2) = aeb5502a81520f7398187635d0426630034c276491fa32512e5702eb73d8525f

MD5 (OPNsense-16.7.r1-OpenSSL-cdrom-amd64.iso.bz2) = 5a440e46e841d3c4c05bdb8ee6566fe6
MD5 (OPNsense-16.7.r1-OpenSSL-nano-amd64.img.bz2) = 13ccbcf88b1b5338ccba7440526f146f
MD5 (OPNsense-16.7.r1-OpenSSL-serial-amd64.img.bz2) = 97a3c5e08c4cecff62c5c63d5e29dda0
MD5 (OPNsense-16.7.r1-OpenSSL-cdrom-i386.iso.bz2) = 8cced3f828d063ac237d96f32a8bb2e3
MD5 (OPNsense-16.7.r1-OpenSSL-nano-i386.img.bz2) = 2f38a263a2f0ed2071d5698e31eeb30f
MD5 (OPNsense-16.7.r1-OpenSSL-serial-i386.img.bz2) = 397a54eb4a51f5703b8ec3062afbcef0
