This is similar to what is described in Bug #249427 But I have all conflicting options turned off: ifconfig_igb0="inet 192.168.1.1/24 -tso6 -tso4 -txcsum -txcsum6 -rxcsum -rxcsum6 -lro" #ifconfig igb0 igb0: flags=8963<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500 options=48520b8<VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,JUMBO_MTU,VLAN_HWCSUM,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWFILTER,VLAN_HWTSO,NOMAP> ether ec:f4:bb:be:f7:8c inet 192.168.1.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255 And still when you start the first vm, there is an up/down of the interface. This started after upgrading to 13.5, everything worked fine in 13.4