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That's why I never use the onboard Ethernet chipset, ever.

Even if it's BIOS-disable.

Just buy a decent Intel (or even RTL) Ethernet NIC PCI card, or two.



fwiw another commenter posted about how the firmware for the ME includes drivers for other intel network cards


Yes, but those ME-capable Intel Ethernet NIC require CPU-based processor OOB installation of ME soft-drivers which BSD and Linux do not carry, thankfully: which is why I never use onboard Ethernet.

On the other hand, it is a real technical possibility, for the Intel WiFi NIC PCIe cards to be initialized by its on-board ME processor which can then do this back-PCI driver setup from this ME processor even if BIOS-disabled (or if CPU is dead or halt'd); by and for the (IME/PSP) Intel/AMD CPU-based Motherboards. Not using Onboard Ethernet nor loading its driver takes out that NIC access, but not the possibility of still using any "found" Intel WiFi NIC adapter: do not install NIC with any built-in management engine (ME), including wireless ones like Bluetooth, NFC, WiFi, Zig.

use the plain ol' ME-free Ethernet NIC adapters while not using the onboard Ethernet port (bonus, disable driver to onboard Ethernet) and you will be fine on that topic of concern about ME processor (onboard ones).

Of course, there is always a possibility of unadvertised ME-capability (commonly in WiFi but also seldom in wired) Ethernet NIC adapters made by shady manufacturers but we can mostly find those out and avoid them. Dependable Ethernet NIC adapter manufacturers likes to tout its ME capabilities (because larger market comprises of Enterprise users).




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