Gigabit Ethernet

I just bought a new computer with a Gigabit PCI card in it. I hooked it to my cable modem and then went to control panel, network and internet connections, network connections, and then double clicked on my Gigabit Ethernet card. I looked down at the speed and it said 100 Mbps. I also connected the computer to another one but the other computer only had a 10/100 network card in it and the computer with the gigabit card again registered with 100 Mbps. So what I'm wondering is if the device that the computer is connected to will change the number that it says beside speed. I know that it will not run at Gigabit speeds when it's connected to another 100 Mbps device but shouldn't the speed say 1000 Mbps. I just want to know if I got ripped off and my card won't be able to run at the speed that I payed for. Thanks alot, Mike.

If you are connected at Gigabit, that will tell you 1000Mbps, but since you only have other 100Mbps nics/modems, then that's all that you will connect at.

To achieve gigabit speeds, you need to connect 2 gigabit NICs, with a gigabit-ready cable (CAT 5e or CAT6)

Windows reporting 100Mbit is just reporting the negotiated speed.

If you plug into another gigabit device, it will show 1000Mbit

Agreed. This is the same situation if you had a 100baseT card attached to a 10baseT hub. It will report 10baseT in windows.

The only way you will see 1000mbps in windows is if both devices connected by cat5e/cat6 are gigabit ready. In your example, both your other computer and your cable modem only can accept 10/100 speeds. To test it just look to see if windows has the right drivers "Gigabit" in the name usually. Other than that you can't test w/o another gigabit ready device.

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