This problem has been around forever, Linux seems to think it is fine to use the r8169 driver for an r8168 NIC but this often causes problems including the link not working at all.

In my case ethttool shows the link up and detected but it simply does not work especially on a laptop that has been resumed from suspension.  Sometimes it takes several minutes for it to work or to unplug and replug the ethernet.

Here is the solution:

Install the r8168 Driver:

sudo apt-get install r8168-dkms

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  r8168-dkms
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 25 not upgraded.
Need to get 85.0 kB of archives.
After this operation, 1,109 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/universe amd64 r8168-dkms all 8.041.00-1 [85.0 kB]
Fetched 85.0 kB in 0s (98.3 kB/s)  
Selecting previously unselected package r8168-dkms.
(Reading database ... 325617 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../r8168-dkms_8.041.00-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking r8168-dkms (8.041.00-1) ...
Setting up r8168-dkms (8.041.00-1) ...
Loading new r8168-8.041.00 DKMS files...
First Installation: checking all kernels...
Building only for 4.4.0-170-generic
Building initial module for 4.4.0-170-generic
Done.

r8168:
Running module version sanity check.
 - Original module
   - No original module exists within this kernel
 - Installation
   - Installing to /lib/modules/4.4.0-170-generic/updates/dkms/

depmod.....................................................

Backing up initrd.img-4.4.0-170-generic to /boot/initrd.img-4.4.0-170-generic.old-dkms
Making new initrd.img-4.4.0-170-generic
(If next boot fails, revert to initrd.img-4.4.0-170-generic.old-dkms image)
update-initramfs....

DKMS: install completed.


Blacklist the r8169 driver from loading on reboot:

echo "blacklist r8169"  > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-r8169.conf

Now to enable it right away:

*Note this will take down your network connection:

sudo rmmod r8169


sudo modprobe r8168


sudo systemctl restart networking


sudo systemctl restart network-manager

After that your network should come back up and work better.

Other weird issues

The speed is capped to about 45k/s on the LAN.  It was using the OS r8169 kernel but then I got the r8168-dkms which didn't help.  I even manually downloaded and compiled the r8168 from the realtek site with no improvement at all.

One other solution that sometimes fixes this is that Windows or Linux itself put the computer/NIC to sleep but it can never fully wake up, resulting in no connection or a slow connection (eg. 45 k/s very intermittent pings and high pings).  If you see behavior like this, don't just reset but actually power down/off the computer/system and try again. This will often fix the problem and a sign that it is in a weird mode is that booting different kernels and using different modules, even manually compiling produces the same result is a good sign you need to shut your computer down to reset the NIC into a proper mode/state.

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