Just discovered you can add VLANs to Realtek NICs on Windows PCs,

I have a fairly grunty desktop I use for running anything that needs Windows, running VMware Workstation and occasional gaming,

I do have a big Dell machine running ESXi which supports VLAN tagging and trunking, but I try and avoid using it as it’s deafeningly loud and very power hungry.

Recently as the lab network I use grows and grows I’ve been struggling to run all the VMs running in Workstation as I’ve been running out of IP space and wanting some more separation between networks.

Now I can add VLANs onto the existing NIC using the Realtek Ethernet Diagnostic Utility, and then bridge each of these NICs to the respective VM in Workstation, and the port to the Mikrotik CRS is now a trunk with all the VLANs on it.

Perfect!