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?
I know you’re looking for non-intel solutions but here is my setup-
Mobo r8169 is the management interface for proxmox.
X710 4 port:
3 ports passed as a a single vmbr for LAN:
- 1 fiber optic to detached building
- 1 DAC to core switch
- 1 DAC to workstation
1 port passed as vmbr for WAN
That config was sorta inherited by trying to pass other non-intel nics as pcie and failing. I needed an sfp for the fiber run so I got that 4 port Intel card. It works well enough that I haven’t bothered to reconfigure it to pass the Intel as pcie.