[K12OSN] Gigabit Client NIC

[Matthew Armitage]

Hey Guys, 
We're evaluating a number of new thin clients at our school district here and I'm having a bit of an issue. Here's the scenario: 
I'm using K12LTSP EL5 on the server side 
One of the terminals (an HP thin client with a 10/100 NIC) boots fine and runs great 
Three of the new terminals we're testing have gigabit NICs (Realtek 8168b) and refuse to boot 

The three gig capable clients all kernel panic when they try to load the network driver. The boot gives me a error stating that the network card was not detected. Now I'm guessing that this means the LTSP kernel that is included in K12LTSP EL5 doesn't have gigabit network support enabled. 
So, my question is, how do I get this support into the client's kernel? 
Hopefully you guys can help me out, because I'm not really keen on the HP clients. We're hoping to be able to transition to a system similar to Kamloops in the future and I'm not convinced that they will be useful at that point. 
Thanks in advance, 

Matthew Armitage, 
Technician, SD72 (Campbell River)