Re: Ethernet Connection Dropped Again

[Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org>]

On Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 06:44:55PM -0500, Thomas George wrote:
> Starting last month the PC Ethernet connection is sometimes not made
> atbootup or is occasionally lost. When this happens the only way I havefound
> to re-establish the connection is to turn the TP-Link AC1750 router off and
> on again.
> 
> The system is Debian Stretch.
> 
> The connection was just dropped and I recorded the attached last 60 lines of
> dmesg and syslog
> 
> Can anyone tell me why this happens or point me to references I must study
> to learn how to fix this?
> 
> 
> 
> [    8.573411] r8169 0000:03:00.0: firmware: failed to load rtl_nic/rtl8168d-2.fw (-2)
> [    8.573471] r8169 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for rtl_nic/rtl8168d-2.fw failed with error -2
> [    8.573474] r8169 0000:03:00.0 enp3s0: unable to load firmware patch rtl_nic/rtl8168d-2.fw (-2)
> [    8.596929] r8169 0000:03:00.0 enp3s0: link down
> [    8.596942] r8169 0000:03:00.0 enp3s0: link down
> [    8.600278] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): enp3s0: link is not ready
> [   16.181809] r8169 0000:03:00.0 enp3s0: link up
> [   16.181825] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): enp3s0: link becomes ready
> [   57.501798] r8169 0000:03:00.0 enp3s0: link down
> [   74.041344] r8169 0000:03:00.0 enp3s0: link up
> [   74.977952] r8169 0000:03:00.0 enp3s0: link down
> [   79.850298] r8169 0000:03:00.0 enp3s0: link up
> [  161.205363] r8169 0000:03:00.0 enp3s0: link down
> [  180.008520] r8169 0000:03:00.0 enp3s0: link up
> [  183.550534] r8169 0000:03:00.0 enp3s0: link down
> [  188.145323] r8169 0000:03:00.0 enp3s0: link up
> [  335.644775] r8169 0000:03:00.0 enp3s0: link down
> [  362.971011] r8169 0000:03:00.0 enp3s0: link up

These are the pertinent lines.

Likely causes:

- the cable is bad
- the router's switch module is bad, perhaps overheating
- the NIC is bad

I googled for "TP-Link AC1750 ethernet drop" and found lots of
hits, so I would guess that you should complain to TP-Link. 

-dsr-