@Andrew I eventually managed to get v2.17.1 of the realtek driver compiled and loaded. I have an RTL8153 and an RTL8156 based USB adapter connected to my host device which are both being correctly identified (took me a while to work out how to get the updated kernel module to load on boot but figured it out in the end). Have added both networks to a VM and everything seems to be working ok (transfer speeds are as expected).

What is the issue you're seeing with the USB naming? I already had the RTL8153 USB working with the default driver and a rename rule in '70-persistent-net.rules'. Added a similar rule for the RTL8156 USB and both renames seem to be surviving reboots with the updated 2.17.1 driver.

@Andrew That sounds encouraging! Happy to help out by doing some testing if that's a) possible and b) would assist.

Apologies for the bump of an old topic, but is anyone aware of the existence of an updated r8152 driver that will support the r8156 (2.5gbe) chipset within xcp-ng?

I can download the driver source from realtek directly, but am not 100% on how to compile it and then have xcp-ng use it in preference to the existing driver.