I’m planning out a proxmox box with an OPNsense VM for an upcoming build. I want to consolidate multiple little boxes into one more capable device.
I was planning on using a dual port NIC that I would passthru to the OPNsense VM. I like the idea of the WAN interface being piped directly to the VM rather than passing through the host and being presented as a virtual device. But that means BSD has to play nice with it and as I understand it, BSD network drivers can be temperamental and intel’s drivers are just better.
I was looking at using a cheap dual port intel 226v NIC for this, but intel’s not in a great place right now so I’d like to consider other options. Everywhere online, people scream “only use intel NICs for this” but I find it ridiculous that in 2025, nobody else has managed to make stable drivers for their hardware in this use case.
What are your experiences with non-intel NICs in OPNsense?
enterprise wont likely support 2.5gig which is what I’m targeting for this build. 10 gig is too expensive and power hungry for my tastes but 2.5 or 5 should be fine.
10 gig sfp+ isnt that expensive or power hungry anymore. You can get a new switch for ~100$ now. A complete 2.5 gig network is probably more expensive as you can’t really get used nics.
10 gig sfp+ isnt that expensive or power hungry anymore. You can get a new switch for ~100$ now. A complete 2.5 gig network is probably more expensive as you can’t really get used nics.
I need VLANs and I’m planning some PoE+ stuff too, meaning higher costs though now that I think about it those are probably more common in 10Gig switches anyway. But that still means they are consuming more power, making more heat, making more noise from fans…
VLANs don’t really enter into the equation here. They are layer 2 and will be important for switch choice, but not for NICs.
Poe does add some complexity, so sfp+ will no longer be a good category for this. You will essentially be reduced to a handful of models for 2.5 or 5g without specs.
You might be at the point in your planning where you need to evaluate why you need 2.5g in the first place. There are very few use cases for 2.5g in the home as it is.
its basically a bit of futureproofing. 1 gig is fine for my home but I want the option to go a step further if I want to later.
You can take a look at mikrotik, their switches are really cheap and some of them are even layer 3, but I don’t know about their availability in the US.
I don’t have one yet, but their 4 port 100 gig switch looks verry tempting.