10/100Mbps NIC, what gives...

[Vincent Trouilliez]

Hi,

This morning my ISP upgraded my cable internet connection from 1Mbps to
30Mbps. Problem is that at the very best, I experience roughly 10Mbps,
for example when I download stuff from the main/UK Ubuntu servers, I
witness mostly 1,0 to 1,2MB/s speeds.

Then I thought of something stupid (please don't laugh, okay ?! ;-), my
twisted brain somehow thought: I get 10Mbps... and NIC's are always
labelled as 10/100Mbps... what does this 10/100 mean, could it be that
it's two different modes, and that my NIC could be somehow configured
to use only 10Mbps speeds ?!!

I don't really believe that it's my problem, but I have nothing to
loose, and I am just curious to learn.

So, all these Ethernet cards that are alwyas called "10/100", does it
mean they have two distinct modes of operation ? How does one control
what speed the card is set for ? Can Linux control it ? How can I
check.modify this ?
Or is it controlled automatically, between the NIC and my cable modem,
hence I can only hope that the modem actually asked for 100 not 10 ?
Or maybe it's the NIC that tells the modem what modes it's capable of,
and maybe the NIC fails to tell the modem that it can do 100, so the
modem falls back to slow/10MBps mode ?

If you know anything, please stop by ! ;-)


--
Vince