Troubleshooting NIC Logs by NETDEV WATCHDOG

Not sure if this is exactly an "answer" or not, but it did solve my issue, as far as this particular case is concerned. This seems to be related to ACPI.

I edited my /etc/grub.conf file to add the following to the end of the kernel line:

noapic acpi=off pci=noacpi

I'm now no longer seeing any errors in the log.

Could it be that power saving features were taking the interface down and bringing it back up in a slower mode? Or could it be some bug with the hardware/firmware and this kernel? Not sure ~ but this at least fixes my issue (it's a production server, whose network we never want to be down).