RealTek re(4) driver in 4.11 ????

[Mike O'Dell]

is there any clean way to retrofit the RealTek re(4) gig ether driver
into a 4.11 system?  i have a system that's been running just
fine for years and would prefer to keep it that way. however,
i would like to use the gig-e card that i've come into as a
second ethernet spigot, hence the query.

yes, i could buy a new card, and will if that's the easy way out,
but a quick look at the local Microcenter today was unsettling.
i took the list of supported gig-e cards from the 4.11 "Hardware List",
but several of the cards listed (yes, the same model numbers) now
have a RealTek 8169 firmly attached to the card. in fact, i could
only find one which was not a RealTek and that was an unsupported
Marvel chip.  this was across at least 8 different vendors.
final score: RealTek 8, Marvel 1, Other 0.

there seems to be a couple of troubling trends here.

	-mo