Ubuntu network slow RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Realtek

I recently reinstalled Ubuntu, and found that my network was agonizingly slow. Installing the driver from the Realtek website fixed this. My card is RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller, but I imagine this will work for other versions too.

The problem is that the default driver does not support this card well. Blacklist it.

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-network

and add

r8169.ko

to it

Download driver from the Realtek website.

Extract it. Compile it by going to the folder where you have extracted it (Downloads, for example) as root (your prompt will be something like this: root@vidyut-Compaq-435-Notebook-PC:~/Downloads/r8101-1.025.00#)and:

make

and

make install

The make install didn’t work for me, so I had to manually copy it into the folder.

cp src/r8101.ko /lib/modules/3.11.0-12-generic/kernel/drivers/net/ethernet/realtek/

Then run:

depmod -a
modprobe r8101
service network-manager restart

That should do it or try

ifconfig eth0 down
ifconfig eth0 up
service network-manager restart

Your network should be working normally now.