Realtek R8169 driver Ubuntu 20.04 (with RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 0c))
After hunting down some ethernet issues since last autumn I think I narrowed it down finally to a driver / kernel issue.
I opened some other threads here:
Internet sites are loading slowly sometimes with Firefox and Chromium
resolv.conf and sporadic slow host resolving (DNS issue) - Ubuntu 20.04
Websites takes some seconds to start loading sporadically - resolve hostname - DNS issue?
When surfing with my onboard REALTEK ethernet ( Mobo: MSI model: H81M-E34 (MS-7817) v: 3.0, BIOS: American Megatrends v: 17.5 date: 03/30/2015) websites sporadically load only after 5 or even 10 seconds as the DNS response sometimes take 5 or more seconds. I installed wireshark and saw that this is due to timeouts (DNS or TCP). When using an external USB ethernet adapter it's working fine, so my network configuration is fine.
When using Manjaro or an Ubuntu 20.04 live image I'm getting the same problems. However, when using a Debian Buster image no such issues occur. With Debian I haven't tested it extensively, but but while using it it was fine. I also switched from Buster to Ubuntu 20.04 and didn't recognize such issues with Debian Buster before, so this is all consistent.
As an solution I just could use the external adapter of course, but it would be nicer if I get the internal ethernet working again.
Does anyone else oberve similar issues with the Realtek 8169 driver in more recent kernels and would it help to install the dkms-8168 driver? I haven't done this yet, cause I read the people didn't have internet after installing and even after purging the driver. Or should I use a more recent kernel?
Some more info about my hardware:
Kernel: 5.4.0-62-lowlatency x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Xfce 4.14.2 Distro: Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS (Focal Fossa)
Machine: Type: Desktop Mobo: MSI model: H81M-E34 (MS-7817) v: 3.0 serial: <superuser/root required> BIOS: American Megatrends v: 17.5 date: 03/30/2015
CPU: Topology: Quad Core model: Intel Core i5-4460 bits: 64 type: MCP L2 cache: 6144 KiB Speed: 3335 MHz min/max: 800/3400 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 3354 2: 3395 3: 3376 4: 3318
Graphics: Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics driver: i915 v: kernel Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.9 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 4600 (HSW GT2) v: 4.5 Mesa 20.2.6
Audio: Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel Device-2: BEHRINGER UMC204HD 192k type: USB driver: snd-usb-audio Device-3: AKAI Professional M.I. type: USB driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.4.0-62-lowlatency
Network: Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet driver: r8169 IF: enp2s0 state: down mac: d8:cb:8a:e8:e9:99 Device-2: Realtek RTL8153 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter type: USB driver: r8152 IF: enx00e04c000176 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: 00:e0:4c:00:01:76
Drives: Local Storage: total: 537.79 GiB used: 97.03 GiB (18.0%) ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 850 EVO 250GB size: 232.89 GiB ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB vendor: Samsung model: Portable SSD T5 size: 232.89 GiB ID-3: /dev/sdc type: USB vendor: Transcend model: JetFlash Transcend 16GB size: 14.71 GiB ID-4: /dev/sdd type: USB vendor: SanDisk model: Ultra size: 57.30 GiB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 36.41 GiB used: 12.32 GiB (33.8%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1 ID-2: /home size: 184.23 GiB used: 84.71 GiB (46.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda6 ID-3: swap-1 size: 7.45 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda5
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 30.0 C mobo: N/A Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info: Processes: 221 Uptime: 1h 08m Memory: 7.23 GiB used: 2.93 GiB (40.6%) Shell: bash inxi: 3.0.38 
