Redhat EL 5.4 – Problem with r8169 for RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03)

SYMPTOM Under somewhat heavier network load (copying big file (GB size) from network for example) the network connection would die, without any error message in dmesg or /var/log/messages. A reboot was required to restore network connectivity. HOW TO RESOLVE Downloading and installing the Realtek r8168-8.019.00 driver (or newer). Blacklisted the r8169 module in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf: $ [...]