Modern Intel NICs have both an updatable bootloader and firmware (NVM). Updating this can both unlock new features in OEM cards and fix various issues. If your NIC is on a motherboard or non Intel reference design you may get NVM updates via BIOS and/or a special firmware package from the vendor but likely not. This trick probably only works for cards that are based on or very close to the Intel reference design.

CAKE (Common Applications Kept Enhanced) or tc-cake is a relatively simple way of setting up AQM (Active Queue Management) on a home network. What I find quite different about cake than other such protocols is that a clear goal of this is to make it relatively easy to setup for ’normal’ people. The main reason to setup cake for me on my home network was to try reduce bufferbloat. Which is essentially a fancy term for latency increasing when networks become congested due to packets being queued sequentially.

The GL.iNet GL-S10 is a small IoT gateway based on an ESP32 which has the particularity of being POE powered. It’s apart from this rather unremarkable which makes it perfect for running ESPHome which is increasingly attractive due to the new bluetooth proxy feature in homeassistant. They’re also super hackable and this seems fully supported by the vendor which even gives relatively nice instructions. Aquiring such devices is pretty easy from the usual sources, I found mine on ebay for ~30eur each since I’m impatient and didn’t want to wait.

If you have some Velux blinds (SSL, MSL) or windows which use the velux ACTIVE branding you likely can hook them up to control them remotely. In order to do this you need to buy the velux gateway KIG300 which is often sold as a kit with some temp/humidity sensor which I didn’t get. The annoying thing with this setup is that it’s using the apple homekit integration as well as requiring a smartphone app for the initial setup, pairing this with a network that has no internet is also a little tricky, so this is by far not my favourite solution.