With the release of MacOS 27, Apple announced that they dropped support for Intel Macs and so I decided to repurpose my 2019 Intel Mac Mini that I had spec’d out with 10G Ethernet and 16G RAM. I was able to unlock the boot loader and load up Linux on it to turn it into a 10G SFP+ connected router. I was previous running a Lenovo Mini PC with a 4 port 2.5G card where I could connect the Modem, Switch, VPN In, VPN Out to the router directly. The previous setup was technically more efficient as the bulk of the traffic was flowing in and out of the router. However, in the new setup, the bulk of the traffic is also now flowing in and out of the switch as well as the router which is technically less efficient. The M4 Pro Mac Mini is running the VPN In / Out solution that I had previously worked on and posted on here (including the proxy backup solution as well). Now I have the Intel Mac Mini connected with a 10G SFP+ trunk port which has the 4 separate VLANs on the switch to connect and separate those 4 different networks working along side the ARM Mac Mini!

The 4 main functions and routing paths of the network are:

• WiFi In -> To VPN
• VPN In -> To VPN
• VPN Out -> To WAN
• WAN Out -> To WAN

~