I used the newest vendor driver for my onboard NIC (board: ASUS M5A97 Pro) and those sites to get it running on kernel 3.0:

<http://www.twm-kd.com/linux/realtek-rtl81688111e-and-ubuntu-linux/>

The problem now is, that this doesn't work with either kernel 3.1 or 3.2:

<https://code.google.com/p/r8168/issues/detail?id=6>

My question is: does anyone have a solution to get it run on the newest kernel? Or is this a plaque I have to carry forever?