basically @BlueFox sold me this: https://cdn-docs.av-iq.com/dataSheet/XK-FLX.pdf and while I was leery about going with REALTEK nics and after disabling all hardware offloads I was still having issues where for seemingly no reason connectivity would die. On a whim I found an option to enable powerd and set it to full blast and haven't had any issues since. I guess it was just going to sleep after a while or turning off the nics. I figured i'd share in case anyone else was freaking out like I was.
edit: BlueFox is a gem of a human being and the transaction went super swimmingly and the little box is working super duper well.
edit: BlueFox is a gem of a human being and the transaction went super swimmingly and the little box is working super duper well.
