[SOLVED] Unresponsive Internet Every Minute

Question

I recently installed Arch Linux on a new computer from the ISO image provided on the website and upgraded all of the packages to their recent versions. I am having a problem with my internet. The internet is sluggish and every 30 to 60 seconds just stops working altogether. Sometimes it comes back in a couple of minutes, sometimes it does not. If I manually bring down the interface and put the interface back up using netcfg, then I can use the internet for another minute before it becomes completely unresponsive. Has anyone encountered this problem?
Here is the information on my system. Here is rc.conf. I used localhost as my host name to make troubleshooting easier.
# /etc/rc.conf - Main Configuration for Arch Linux
# LOCALIZATION
# LOCALE: available languages can be listed with the 'locale -a' command
# DAEMON_LOCALE: If set to 'yes', use $LOCALE as the locale during daemon
# startup and during the boot process. If set to 'no', the C locale is used.
# HARDWARECLOCK: set to "UTC" or "localtime", any other value will result
# in the hardware clock being left untouched (useful for virtualization)
# Note: Using "localtime" is discouraged.
# TIMEZONE: timezones are found in /usr/share/zoneinfo
# KEYMAP: keymaps are found in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps
# CONSOLEFONT: found in /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts (only needed for non-US)
# CONSOLEMAP: found in /usr/share/kbd/consoletrans
# USECOLOR: use ANSI color sequences in startup messages
# VERBOSE: Verbose level (from 1 to 8). man 3 syslog for level info
LOCALE="en_US.UTF-8"
DAEMON_LOCALE="no"
HARDWARECLOCK="localtime"
TIMEZONE="America/New_York"
KEYMAP="us"
CONSOLEFONT=
CONSOLEMAP=
USECOLOR="yes"
VERBOSE="3"
# HARDWARE
# MODULES: Modules to load at boot-up. Blacklisting is no longer supported.
# Replace every !module by an entry as on the following line in a file in
# /etc/modprobe.d:
# blacklist module
# See "man modprobe.conf" for details.
MOD_AUTOLOAD="yes"
MODULES=()
# Udev settle timeout (default to 30)
UDEV_TIMEOUT=30
# Scan for FakeRAID (dmraid) Volumes at startup
USEDMRAID="no"
# Scan for BTRFS volumes at startup
USEBTRFS="no"
# Scan for LVM volume groups at startup, required if you use LVM
USELVM="no"
# NETWORKING
# HOSTNAME: Hostname of machine. Should also be put in /etc/hosts
HOSTNAME="localhost"
# Use 'ip addr' or 'ls /sys/class/net/' to see all available interfaces.
# Wired network setup
# - interface: name of device (required)
# - address: IP address (leave blank for DHCP)
# - netmask: subnet mask (ignored for DHCP)
# - gateway: default route (ignored for DHCP)
# Static IP example
# interface=eth0
# address=192.168.0.2
# netmask=255.255.255.0
# gateway=192.168.0.1
# DHCP example
# interface=eth0
# address=
# netmask=
# gateway=
#interface=eth0
#address=
#netmask=
#gateway=
WIRED_INTERFACE="eth0"
# Setting this to "yes" will skip network shutdown.
# This is required if your root device is on NFS.
NETWORK_PERSIST="no"
# Enable these netcfg profiles at boot-up. These are useful if you happen to
# need more advanced network features than the simple network service
# supports, such as multiple network configurations (ie, laptop users)
# - set to 'menu' to present a menu during boot-up (dialog package required)
# - prefix an entry with a ! to disable it
# Network profiles are found in /etc/network.d
# This now requires the netcfg package
#NETWORKS=(main)
# DAEMONS
# Daemons to start at boot-up (in this order)
# - prefix a daemon with a ! to disable it
# - prefix a daemon with a @ to start it up in the background
DAEMONS=(syslog-ng net-auto-wired netfs crond)
Here is /etc/hosts.
# /etc/hosts: static lookup table for host names
#<ip-address> <hostname.domain.org> <hostname>
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
::1 localhost.localdomain localhost
# End of file
Here is the ethernet driver.
[ 3.428560] r8169 Gigabit Ethernet driver 2.3LK-NAPI loaded
I have downgraded netcfg to an earlier version that I had on my laptop and this did not fix the problem. I have also disabled the IPv6 module. In addition, the internet works perfectly when I dual boot into Windows.
Last edited by famboozle (2011-07-09 19:43:37)

Answer 1

What motherboard/chipset do you have? Recent Asus P8P67-motherboards, for example, use a new r8169-family controller (8111E) which is not recognized by pre-2.6.39 kernels. In fact, it seems that the latest kernel update (2.6.39.3-1) represents a step backward and does not identify the 8111E-controller anymore. My computer has the same erratic behavior as yours.
The r8168-driver from AUR does work, however.