Hello. I just upgraded to 3Gbps fiber service. My WAN is getting 3Gbps data throughput but my LAN is stuck at 1Gbps. Is there a way to fix this so my LAN is also getting max speed across my network? All of my switches are 2.5Gbps and my ethernet cables are CAT7. NIC is a Intel X540-T2 dual 10Gbps. Opnsense is fully updated to 25.1.9. Running on a baremetal system, not virtualized. Here is the ifconfig output for this card. How can I get ix0 and ix1 to both autonegotiate to 10Gbase-T?
root@OPNsense:~ # ifconfig
ix0: flags=1008843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST,LOWER_UP> metric 0 mtu 9000
description: LAN (lan)
options=4803828<VLAN_MTU,JUMBO_MTU,WOL_UCAST,WOL_MCAST,WOL_MAGIC,HWSTATS,MEXTPG>
ether 1a:4b:24:a0:78:58
inet 192.168.1.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex,rxpause,txpause>)
status: active
nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
ix1: flags=1008843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST,LOWER_UP> metric 0 mtu 9000
description: WAN (wan)
options=4803828<VLAN_MTU,JUMBO_MTU,WOL_UCAST,WOL_MCAST,WOL_MAGIC,HWSTATS,MEXTPG>
ether 1a:4b:24:a0:78:59
inet XXX netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast YYY
media: Ethernet autoselect (10Gbase-T <full-duplex,rxpause>)
status: active
nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
If your switch is 2.5G the card cannot run at 10G. You need a switch with at least one 10G interface or a card that supports 2.5G. Which this one apparently does not, so 1G is the fastest both switch and card support.
The speed must always be the same at both ends.
You'll need to buy an X550-T2 if you want to stick with Intel and have a NIC that supports 2.5 gig. 2.5 is a much newer standard than 10 gig, despite what the speeds may suggest, and as such isn't supported on older NICs like the X540-T2, which launched in early 2012.
Quote from: Stormscape on June 19, 2025, 09:39:22 AMYou'll need to buy an X550-T2 [...]
I believe the X550 always supported multi-gig... whereas the early X710s did not. I tend to buy NOS/surplus, so I occasionally run across an old one. Something to watch out for.
I'd stay away from the new E610 unless one falls into your lap - it seems to offer no process/power improvement over the X550. It does support PCI-e v4, so it might be worthwhile if you have slot limits (unlikely at 2.5Gb).
The X550 variant is way more expensive that the X540, because the latter can be had as cheap China knockoffs. If your switch supports 2.5 Gbit/s only, you can as well buy an Intel I226V based card, which works fine with OpnSense.