Wired Ethernet Connection periodically drops

[larryb]

I am hardwired with an ethernet connection and it was working great for many months. Recently it started dropping periodically…very annoying to say the least.

The product is: RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller

My configuration has the driver listed as: r8169
The firmware is listed as: rtl8168g-3_0.0.1 04/23/13

I’m still a newbie in this stuff…but it doesn’t look like the firmware and the driver are matching like they should be…could that be the problem or should i look elsewhere?

[wolfman]

RTL8111

Hi @larryb,

take a look here:

How To get your Realtek RTL8111/RTL8168 working (updated guide) –

[Dave_Barnes]

I have the same hardware here. No problems. I would look at your cable or target devices.

A good way to check for problems (eth0 is my RTL8168):

user@my_host:~$ netstat -i 
Kernel Interface table
Iface   MTU Met   RX-OK RX-ERR RX-DRP RX-OVR    TX-OK TX-ERR TX-DRP TX-OVR Flg
eth0       1500 0   1975313      0      0 0       1098856      0      0      0 BMRU
lo        65536 0     17738      0      0 0         17738      0      0      0 LRU

(The columns don’t line up on the terminal either:) All of the error counters should be 0.

Here is another:

user@my_host:~$ ifconfig eth0
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr xxx  
          inet addr:192.168.101.202  Bcast:192.168.101.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::182e:2781:d6f4:87e4/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1975342 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1098880 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:2029175372 (2.0 GB)  TX bytes:312141046 (312.1 MB)

PCI Bus 02:
02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller [10ec:8168] (rev 06)

	Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. P8P67 and other motherboards [1043:8432]
	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx+
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 27
	Region 0: I/O ports at c800 [size=256]
	Region 2: Memory at fdfff000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K]
	Region 4: Memory at fdff8000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: r8169
	Kernel modules: r8169

[larryb]

@wolfman,

That was a great guide for getting the driver but i’m still having some issue with the wired connection dropping. I get a different output from the guide when i run the command…

sudo ethtool -i enp1s0

So i’m wondering if something is still not set right…and maybe you can tell from the output…

driver: r8168
version: 8.041.00-NAPI
firmware-version:
expansion-rom-version:
bus-info: 0000:01:00.0
supports-statistics: yes
supports-test: no
supports-eeprom-access: no
supports-register-dump: yes
supports-priv-flags: no

[wolfman]

Hi @larryb,

I am not sure, what I suggest is that you change your software sources download location and try running a system update again and see if that helps?:

Ubuntu Mate Update Guide

These are my own setting preferences, use at your own risk!. AN IMPORTANT NOTE FOR LINUX BEGINNERS. WHEN YOU ARE IN RECOVERY MODE, THE KEYBOARD DEFAULTS TO US ENGLISH, IF YOU HAVE ANY OTHER LANGUAGE KEYBOARD OTHER THAN US ENGLISH, WHEN YOU TYPE "Y" (FOR "YES"), IT MIGHT SHOW UP AS A DIFFERENT LETTER, ON MY KEYBOARD I MUST PRESS THE "Z" KEY WHICH EQUATES TO "Y" AS I HAVE A GERMAN KEYBOARD, JUST PRESS "BACKSPACE" AND HIT A DIFFERENT KEY UNTIL YOU SEE THE "Y" SHOW UP!. Click on "Subscri…

Maybe @ouroumov can be of some help as he knows a lot about networking?.

[ouroumov]

Not sure I can be much help, only problem I’ve ever had with a cable connection was most likely due to some IPv6 related DNS problem.

System with static IP address started using IPv6 -> Firefox/wget: Server Not Found

Hi everyone Small problem here, not sure what was causing it. On my work machine I have a cable connection with a static IPv4 address. Today I had a lot of "Server Not Found" errors when browsing new websites. After pinging the websites for a while, they were magically found again. I've observed this behavior in Firefox 47 and in wget. Ubuntu MATE 16.04 LTS I noticed in the terminal that wget attempted to connect using an IPv6 address, and was not falling back to an IPv4 address when tha…

@larryb can you elaborate on what you mean by “connection drops”?
Does it means you can’t reach websites anymore or do you loose the interface altogether (not shown in ifconfig)

[larryb]

It looks like i messed up my sources.list file a little when i added “universe” to the lines. The output from “apt-get update” told me which lines were problematic, so i went in and changed them to where the sources.list file is no longer giving me problems.

So far the wired ethernet connection is working better now, but it still drops its connection at times. I’m going to try ‘ignoring’ the IPv6 in the ethernet wired settings to see if that might work more consistently based on what @ouroumov posted.

I appreciate the help and will let you know my progress.

[larryb]

The next time the wired connection drops i’ll run ifconfig to see…i’ve not done that yet.

[larryb]

The wired connection is still dropping. Here are the readings that i get while it is ‘dropped’…

Firstly, when i click my network connection button at the top right of my computer screen it shows my wireless connection as connected, but my ‘ethernet network’ has its verbiage grayed out with a grayed out “disconnected” under it.

$ ifconfig enp1s0

outputs this…

enp1s0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 68:f7:28:71:6f:a2
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:21717 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:15079 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:16184186 (16.1 MB) TX bytes:2009111 (2.0 MB)
Interrupt:34 Base address:0xc000

$ netstat -i
outputs this…

Kernel Interface table
Iface MTU Met RX-OK RX-ERR RX-DRP RX-OVR TX-OK TX-ERR TX-DRP TX-OVR Flg
enp1s0 1500 0 21717 0 0 0 15079 0 0 0 BMU
lo 65536 0 2143 0 0 0 2143 0 0 0 LRU
wlp3s0 1500 0 3385 0 0 0 1047 0 0 0 BMRU

$ sudo lshw -C network
outputs this for the ethernet…

*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
logical name: enp1s0
version: 10
serial: 68:f7:28:71:6f:a2
size: 10Mbit/s
capacity: 1Gbit/s
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8168 driverversion=8.041.00-NAPI duplex=half latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=10Mbit/s
resources: irq:34 ioport:2000(size=256) memory:f0a04000-f0a04fff memory:f0a00000-f0a03fff

$ lspci
outputs this in the last three lines…

01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 10)
02:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS5227 PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01)
03:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8723BE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter

[wolfman]

Hi @larryb,

I forgot to ask, what version of Ubuntu MATE are you using btw?.

[larryb]

Kernel: 4.4.0-59-generic x86_64 (64 bit)
Desktop: MATE 1.12.1
Distro: Ubuntu 16.04 xenial

[wolfman]

Did you change your software sources download location as I suggested earlier?.

[larryb]

Yeah…i followed those instructions. I’ll try to get a new ethernet cable to see if that may be the problem…but i doubt it.

[wolfman]

Hi @larryb,

you can try using the “iperf” command and see if you can see whats happening on your network with that?:

sudo apt-get install iperf

https://openmaniak.com/iperf.php

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/zesty/man1/iperf.1.html

Let us know how you get on Larry!.