Now it gets funnier. The new 2.5 Gbps NIC just randomly appears on boot or not. I’ve spent half of the day to troubleshoot this and can’t figure out why.

It’s a complete experiment with cheap network gear from China. I have a HP T730 mini PC that serves as my router. I’m installing a cheap 2.5 Gbps NIC for LAN side. Then there’s a switch with 4x2.5 Gbps Ethernet and 2xSFP+ ports. My two main machines (PC and home server) are getting 10 Gbps SFP+ cards that I’ll attach with DAC cables.

OS is OpenWRT, because I’ve been connecting over WiFi to the Internet in both old and new locations. OPNsense just will not work with any wireless adapter I’ve tried. I will try agan once I route Ethernet to my room.

I’m curious if all of this works with cheap network gear. Today I’m configuring a fresh OpenWRT installation on the router.

I’ve just moved and I’m setting up my machines. NIC died in my DIY router just before the move so I’m upgrading to 2.5/10 Gbps at the same time.

Thanks. Plain Wireguard is an option I’m considering, but it’s also considerably more hassle to configure and maintain, especially as I connect more family members to my network. Headscale also has an extra layer of security in the form of ACLs, which I plan to use on top of basic firewall configuration. I do connect my personal machines with Wireguard, but I use one family member as a Tailscale/Headscale test subject.

As for SELinux, I’ve gave up on it already. It caused me so much headache over the years I disable it with a kernel parameter by default on all machines.