What are people’s thoughts on these 2.5GbE Protectli units for OpenWrt? My biggest concern right off the bat are the Intel I-226V adapters… I’ve heard of so many problems with this series of ethernet adapters (and was bitten by a faulty I-225 on an ASUS motherboard years ago). But on the other hand, it seems crazy that a company would go all-in on these for a complete model line if they’re still unreliable. How solid are OpenWrt’s drivers for them?
Intel runs the show, they disabled some EEE detail on 225/226 cards driver recently. There are no specific "OpenWrt drivers" outside Linux mainline.
Intel 2.5G is still busted despite 4 revisions. i225 rev 4 aka i226 + flashing latest NVM firmware + being okay with non-functioning EEE and ASPM = "working." Only buy with a return policy and stress test the units during that period. Some have reported zero issues will all revisions but YMMV.
A four port realtek 8125 card is about $40.
Note: Intel will be pushing e610 / 10G hard in 2026 to replace all their busted 2.5G stuff.