for the last year, or 1.5 years, i've been using r8168 from [community] because at that time r8169, which is included in the kernlel, didn't work properly. i got disconnected frequently, and often LAN speed dropped to ~0. after some kernel upgrades the r8168 driver needed to be re-built, and i kept filing bugs when this happened -- as now, after i got 3.12.4-1-ARCH. in the meantime i switched back to r8169 though, and lo and behold, it seems to be working fine now. i'm wondering if this may be the case for others as well? nothing changed in my hardware, but the kernel with the r8169 driver did, and now it's working fine for me. is r8168 still needed? -- phani.
