I used the drivers from the realtek 8618 with the P55 storage drivers. At times when I'm using consoles for both Linux and windows in ESXi 4.0 or 4.1 my network will randomly stop working. All I have to do is unplug and replug in the network interface and all is well. As you can guess it gets quite annoying. It is not the switch as it has happened on two different switches.

Has anyone had this problem with realtek 8111c?

I am seeing alot of this in the esxi logs:

vmkernel: 2:18:08:32.724 cpu1:4123)<3>RTNL: assertion failed at vmkdrivers/src26/drivers/net/r8168/r8168_n.c (1534)vmkernel:

It looks like some people are recommending to use the rt8169 driver from this post

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1525

I have the 8111dl driver and on my MD-GD80 MSI P55 motherboard and experiance the same frustration as you. At times I go for weeks with no issue, other times it is several times a week. I will be trying this out soon, as I am getting tired of having to fix this all the time.

Please post back if you try this and it works!

Check out the RT8169 driver here viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1525

People have been reporting this problem is aleviated with this driver.