Network speed

[Peter Garrett]

On Mon, 1 Jan 2007 09:32:24 -0700
"Mike Mikkelsen" <raindancer21 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Everything
> works fine, except that the new D-Link DGE-530T gigabit NIC I installed in
> the box doesn't seem to want to connect at 1Gb/s, it will only connect at
> 100Mbit.  There's a Linux driver that comes with the card, but the
> instructions for installing it are pretty much limited to, "merge it into
> the Kernel and recompile".  Which I have not the faintest clue how to do,
> and frankly, it seems like doing that would be more trouble than it's worth
> to me.

Depending on how well the stock kernel supports the NIC, the supplied
driver might not be necessary. To see what the kernel has set for the
card, you can run

sudo ethtool eth0  

( or eth1 etc if you have multiple cards. )

The ethtool can also be used to set various parameters - but its use is
beyond my experience, so I won't venture any help on that :) The manual
page looks reasonably comprehensible...

man ethtool

Usually the rate is auto-negotiated  of course, but this may be a case
where it needs tweaking. I seem to recall reading that there are a few
gotchas involved - such as connected systems expecting auto-negotiate and
getting confused by manual settings - but that is vague I know :)

Perhaps someone with more experience will jump in - but the output of 

sudo ethtool eth0

and 

sudo mii-tool -v eth0    # -v for verbose - see man mii-tool

or whatever your interface is, might help .

Peter