10/100Mbps NIC, what gives...

[Peter Garrett]

On Tue, 29 Aug 2006 04:02:07 +0200
Vincent Trouilliez <vincent.trouilliez at modulonet.fr> wrote:

> 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.

<snip>

> If you know anything, please stop by ! ;-)
> 
Very few servers are going to be capable of giving you better than 1- 1.2
MB/s ;-)

For example, my current maximum downstream is around 1.5 MB/s - but I can
only reliably get that from my ISP's mirror, which is three hops away from
my router:

1  10.1.1.1  0.440 ms  0.373 ms  0.347 ms
2  mas2.ba.optusnet.com.au (198.142.128.4)  21.610 ms  39.855 ms  11.223
ms 
3  mas5-vl420.gw.optusnet.com.au (211.29.138.3)  34.714 ms  49.416 ms
47.799 ms 
4  mirror.optusnet.com.au (211.29.132.173) [open] 

I found a nearby Ubuntu apt mirror that gives me around 800 KB/s speeds and
synchronises regularly, which is plenty fast enough for me.  ( Optus
haven't synchronised their Ubuntu repos since June as far as I can see
- very bad... )

So if your ISP has some big files a few hops away, that would give you
some idea of your maximum ( assuming the server has the bandwidth to
supply it) .  The number of hops and the distance make a big difference -
for instance if I point apt at the archive.ubuntu.com URLs I only get
around 100 KB/s, and the Western Australia au.archive.ubuntu is only half
as fast as the closer mirror I found ( I'm on the East coast of
Australia ).

Also, if I remember correctly, on cable you are sharing your bandwidth
with others on the same subnet, so your  download capacity will vary with
how many people are using the network heavily at a given time.

Your nic should negotiate 10/100 automatically. Type 

sudo ethtool eth0    to see what it's up to ( I don't think this is the
issue though)

Hey, 1 - 1.2 MB/s is pretty good anyway, is it not?  *G*

Peter