E6400 Ethernet card question

I've been noticing as of late that my internet connection has been rather slow. I now realize that my local area connection speed is now 100 Mbps when running from my cable modem to my laptop instead of 1 Gbps like it was before. Can someone explain this? I called Dell today but am still a bit puzzled. The local area connection speed depends on my card, not on the internet speed, right? Since I have a Gigabit card, it should be 1 Gbps, right?

I also noticed that when I run ethernet from the cable modem to my router (LinkSys WRT310N gigabit N router), it reads 1 Gbps. Can someone explain please?

thanks!

 

The internet speed is dependent on the cable provider and its router. Most internet feeds are around 20-30Mbps, not 100Mbps or 1Gbps. The cable router may support 100Mbps (I've never seen a cable router that supports 1Gbps links) but you are only getting 20-30Mbps out or so.

Also, the link negotiates to the highest possible speed during a connection. If the laptop supports 1Gbps, but the device supports only 100Mbps...the final speed is 100Mbps. That Linksys supports 1Gbps connections, your laptop supports 1Gbps, so the final connection is 1Gbps.

But your internet is no faster for it.

 

Thanks for the quick reply.

I'm still puzzled as to what my actual LAN speed is when I'm running the Linksys Gigabit Router between the ISP's cable modem and my laptop. Am I really getting 1Gbps LAN speed, or is that just from the Linksys to my laptop? Will it still be 100 Mbps from the ISP's cable modem to my Linksys?

Incidentally, my internet speed (from sites such as speedtest.net) is horrible at the moment, around 1 mbps. I guess that is what you mean by "your internet is no faster for it"?

 

Yes, the router gives a 1Gb/s connection to your notebook because both ends support that speed, but if the cable modem only supports 100Mb/s then that will be the speed of the link between the router and the modem.

If your uplink is only, say, 10Mb/s then that will be the constraint on the speed that the data can flow at. 1Gb/s is faster than any notebook HDD can read or write (but the better SSDs can handle that throughput). Gigabit ethernet is most relevant where multiple computers are sharing a link, eg between a router and a server with a RAID disk array.

John