October 13, 2026
My home linux PC - a 2.5 Ghz network card
I bought a TP-Link TX201 PCIe card for about $25 on October 12, 2026.
(The price was $22.46 on Amazon).
I plugged it in and it "just works".
What we always hope for.
It is based on the RTL8125B chip and uses the linux r8169 driver,
or so I am told. I got it because I now have a Mac-Mini that has
a 2.5 Ghz network, and I use the network to share files
(in particular photos) between the two machines.
I will need to also get a 2.5 Ghz switch, but both machines
are now working nicely at 1.0 Ghz with my current switch.
Some Fedora setup
I type "ifconfig -a" and I see:
eno1: flags=4099 mtu 1500
RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B)
enp8s0: flags=4163 mtu 1500
inet 192.168.0.109 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.0.255
The issue here is that I have lost my static IP, which should be
192.168.0.5. This is what the Mac mini will look for when it
tries to access my files and photos, so this needs to be fixed.
These days this is all handled by NetworkManager and the "nmcli" command.
I type:
su
nmcli connection show
Wired connection 2 86a2407c-3972-3c5a-96dc-d7c9fbd57f8b ethernet enp8s0
Wired connection 1 6fa72ac5-fe1e-3037-b6fc-f3052ece189d ethernet --
I type this long and error prone command.
I actually craft it here as I edit this page, then I copy and paste it
to actually run it.
nmcli connection down "Wired connection 2"
nmcli connection modify "Wired connection 2" ipv4.method manual ipv4.addresses 192.168.0.5/24 ipv4.gateway 192.168.0.1
nmcli connection up "Wired connection 2"
Network manager files are in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections
Have any comments? Questions?
Drop me a line!