Which NIC for opnsense routing?

[nquinn]

I'm looking at a lot of miniPCs to run opnsense to act as a router (I'm currently on an ancient actiontek).

I know intel nics (i226) are supposed to be better than realtek, but I'm wondering if there are more professional/enterprise grade NICs I should be looking at for this purpose?

 

[boerni666]

i226 is fine. Avoid first revisions, they are buggy.

2.5gbps Realteks are also fine. I run them for routing purposes on a consumer gigabit fiber connection, they're fine and stable. Even my ONT has a Realtek PHY.

Theres not much where you could go into professionel/enterprise grade NICs, if you dont want to move to power-hungry 10gbps or don't wanna go beyond 1gbps. At 1gbps you could also look into broadcom or other intel-chips.

2,5gbps is pure home-user territory.