I finally pulled the trigger and got a QNAP QSW-2104-2T-A-US. A 2-10Gb/s, 4-2.5Gb/s switch so I can take advantage of my 10G NICS on my server and main computer, and the new 2.5G built in Ethernet that is coming in my daughter’s Christmas present 
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My question for you all, since I’m going to officially be supporting faster ethernet…what 2.5 NICS are recommended for 2023? Realtek 8125B? Intel I-226-V? I have a couple other computers that could see an upgrade.
Stay away from these. Intel hasnt been able to get 2.5gb networking to work properly yet.
And, frustratingly, any Linux kernel less then version 4 doesn’t support them either. Not a big deal for a home user but it’s been a PITA at work.
My router is a Topton mini PC from Aliexpress with six of those Intel I-226 NICs, running OpenWRT. I haven’t had any issues. I was under the impression that the I-225 NICs were the ones with issues?
i225 b3 and i226 should be fine, my i225 NIC works fine but I don’t have 2.5G gear.
That being said, I’d go for Intel over Realtek any day of the week.
Supposedly Intel fixed the problems in i225 with each revision, yet people still kept having problems and even the final version wasnt solved. Intel finally released a next version and just called it i226 to get away from the bad name of the 225 but the new one still had the same issue. Just go search “i226 problems” and you will find all the same issues the 225 had. The proposed fix of disabling EEE only works for a small subset of users experiencing the problem.
Linux kernel v4 was released in 2015… I can’t believe you are trying to run modern hardware on kernels that old.
Sounds like they aren’t…but his work still is. Gotta love the decisions made by the bean counters!
I remember sitting in front of a computer screen watching loading screens for years, just because the company didn’t want to upgrade the ram or put a decent CPU in anything. Trip over a dollar to save a dime.