My network card appears to have two Ethernet ports. I'm trying to work out the theoretical maximum speed of those Ethernet ports - specifically if they are Gigabit (1000Mbit/s) ports or plain old 100Mbit/s.
I've tried a couple of different things:
- Device Manager shows me having Realtek PCI GBE Family Controller drivers. Does the GBE stand for Gigabit?
- The controller properties shows both ports are 1.0 Gbps capable.
- I've used WMIC to get the speed in bits. Which is 100000000 bits, so 100 Mb.
- Finally I've checked the Ethernet status. Which is where my confusion lies as this says 100Mbps. Is this because I only have a Cat5 Ethernet cable plugged in, or is this the real speed.
How can I determine the speed of my Ethernet ports?
11 Answer
You have gigabit ports connected to a 100 megabit switch (or equivalent device). GBE = Gigabit Ethernet. The 100 megabit will be coming from the speed negotiated with the switch or equipment on the other end of the link.
The cat5 cabling is probably not relevant - most cat5 cables will negotiate a gigabit connection (but you might not get the full gigabit throughput). That said, if your cabling is only using 2 of the 4 pairs, then it would negotiate 100 megabit.
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