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I can not say I had any problems with Realtek NIC's. I operate a small WISP and I am active in StarOS wireless network reouter community. Most of us there agree that when you have problems with NICS like 3Com or even Intel, you can always use Realtek NIC's for X86-PC routers.
Try ElRepo driver and please report if that helps. I would like to know your experience with ElRepo driver.
Realtek NICs and drivers are typically quite ubiquitous in that they work on nearly every platform. This is especially true with the RTL-8139(+) series. However, that doesn't make them a quality interface. :)
I'm sure there are plenty of installations where these NICs work great without problems. In fact, now that I think about it, my home router uses two RTL-8189 interfaces on FreeBSD 8.1 without problems. They certainly have a proper spot in the network (low throughput, etc). I just wouldn't want them in my servers, especially not for ones expected of high performance or storage related tasks.
--Tim