Persistent Ethernet USB Interface on Intermittent Carrier Signal

Background: Running ArchlinuxARM on an oDroid XU4 that uses both the built-in NIC as well as a USB Ethernet dongle (have tried a number of different manufacturers/ chipsets). Issue: When I disconnect the Ethernet cable from the USB dongle (ie. the USB dongle remains connected to the system but the carrier signal is lost), the Ethernet USB device drops from the system tree and does not reattach when replugging the Ethernet cable (though the USB port itself stays, the subsystem links back to a usb bus device instead of a net device). The ip link command also reflects the loss of the network inte

Question by Whee on Super User, licensed CC BY-SA. We show a short excerpt and link to the original thread as credit.