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Hi everyone,

I've just set up OPNsense for the first time on a mini PC to act as a firewall for our small office. We have around 10 people connecting with laptops from Techyest and everything has been running smoothly except for one issue, two machines are getting inconsistent speeds through the firewall compared to the others, even though they're on the same network segment.

I've checked the firewall rules and they look identical for all devices. Could this be a hardware offloading issue or something NIC related on those specific laptops?

Any pointers in the right direction would be really appreciated!

The VPP support definitely sounds interesting, especially for a Linux-based firewall. I'm curious to see how this project develops. Has the source code/repository been made public yet?

It's frustrating when a BIOS update initially fixes an issue, only for it to resurface after software updates. Since you haven't changed anything hardware-wise, the problem might be related to an OPNsense update affecting driver compatibility with the Intel I-226 controllers.

A few things you can try:

Check the current driver version – Run dmesg | grep -i i226 or ifconfig -a to see if the driver changed after an update.
Rollback to a previous OPNsense version – If the issue started after a recent update, rolling back might confirm if it's software-related.
Disable Power Saving Features – Some users have reported stability improvements by disabling Energy-Efficient Ethernet (EEE) in the BIOS.
Test with a Different Kernel Version – Sometimes newer kernels introduce regressions; rolling back could help.
If you're considering upgrading or adding a reliable network interface, something like the UVC-G5-Dome-Ultra might be worth checking out for stability. Have you tried booting into a Live Linux distro to see if the problem persists outside of OPNsense?