FreeBSD Issue with M.2 NIC?

[Sar6e]

I'm trying to migrate my current OPNsense gateway to new hardware.  Dell Wyse 5070 thin clients can be had pretty cheap at present and support expansion to a second ethernet port.  All up I landed the hardware for less than $100.

The problem I am having is routing traffic via the second ethernet port.

The second ethernet port is connected via an M.2 slot.  Both the onboard and the second ethernet port are Realtek 8111F chipsets. 

To confirm the second ethernet port works at a hardware level, I did a desktop Linux install (Fedora) and connected the second ethernet port.  A network connection was made, a DHCP lease obtained and the correct DNS settings discovered.  All working as expected.  This to me indicates there are no problems with the ethernet port, the M.2 card or the BIOS settings.

I next tried to install FreeBSD 13.2.  I configured the onboard ethernet port (re0) during the installation and again had no problems in getting a DHCP lease and discovering the DNS service.  This implies to me there is no problem with the driver BSD is using for the Realtek 8111 chipset.

If I repeat the install process for BSD and configure the second (M.2) ethernet port, it fails to obtain a DHCP lease.  The interface (re1) is reported as up, but it can't route traffic through it (?), or it cannot discover the router advertisement(?).  TBH, I have no idea what is going on. 

I think I've identified this is not an OPNsense issue but more an issue in the underlying FreeBSD operating system.  So maybe I'm posting in the wrong place, but I figure the people most likely to have tried to use a second M.2 NIC are more likely here than on a FreeBSD forum.

Thanks in advance for any assistance or direction to take with this problem!

[newsense]

Try installing the Realtek drivers in OPNsense

Code: [Select]

pkg install  os-realtek-re