please help: realtek pci-express nic not detected by sys-net

[Surf Nx]

The nic works fine on Fedora Live

Tried all the following over the last 4 (now 6) days. Please help if possible.
rpm -q linux-firmware :
linux-firmware-20161205-69.git91ddce49.fc24.noarch

Failed with DMA setting at:
qvm-prefs -s netvm kernelopts "iommu=soft swiotlb=16384"

dom0 dmesg:

02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev ff)

dom0 lspci -k:

02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev ff)
Kernel driver in use: pciback
Kernel modules: r8169

dom0 lspci -nn:

02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller [10ec:8168] (rev ff)

sys-net dmesg:

pci 0000:00:00.0 [10ec:8168] type 7f class 0xffffff
pci 0000:00:00.0 unknown header type 7f, ignoring device

sudo dmesg | grep pci

pciback 0000:02:00.0: timed out waiting for pending transaction; performing function level reset anyway

ExecStartPre as per the following also failed:

[Unit]
Description=Netvm Fixup
Before=qubes_netvm.service

[Service]
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c 'echo 0000:02:00.0 > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/pciback/permissive'

Type=onshot
RemainAlertExit=yes

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

[Tai...@gmx.com]

Realtek nics are garbage, that series does weird things with interrupts
so it doesn't play well with iommu.

I would say buy something else but I am assuming you have a laptop? then
you'd have to buy a new laptop unless you know how to do component
re-working.

If you have a desktop, then any recent server grade nic is generally a
good choice make sure to look for one that supports SR-IOV so that you
know it supports FLR and thus can be assigned.