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Subject: Re: Recommendations for cheap PCI-E network adapter ?
To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org
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From: Frank Leonhardt <frank2@fjl.co.uk>
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Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2018 21:23:27 +0000
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On 03/01/2018 20:27, John Lyon wrote:
>      - Lack of awareness (the RealTek website lists their drivers as being
> for FreeBSD 8.x but they are really for 11.x and RealTek just never updated
> their site)

IME NIC drivers work pretty well across releases, including moving the 
latest ones back to earlier kernels. Compile the .ko and away you go. 
This is, of course, an observation and not a recommendation.