Question: Why ain't I getting gigabit speed?

[Tom Evans]

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 12:02 AM, Ronald F. Guilmette
<rfg at tristatelogic.com> wrote:
>
>
> I want to thank all of the various people who offered help, advice,
> and suggestings regarding this problem.  It's all really appreciated.
>
> Since I first posted about this issue, I have diligently tried to
> isolate/debug the problem.  I swapped the card into a totally
> different system, also running FreeBSD, and found the exact same
> symptoms.  I used other equipment to verify that both my cables
> and my Linksys E2000 were not the source of the problem.  Lastly,
> I brought up the card in the exact same system where I had originally
> noted the problem, but under Windows rather than FreeBSD.
>
> Anyway, after all this testing, I believe that I can now say
> definitively that the problem is indeed bad hardware in/on the card.
> The card exibits essentially the same symptoms under Windows as it
> does under FreeBSD, i.e. running only at 100mbs, rather than the
> 1gbs that it should be capable of.
>

Generally, if your cheap gigabit NIC doesn't connect at gigabit speeds
with your cheap gigabit switch, it is negotiation issues.
I have identical cheap Intel gigabit NICs (I forget the exact chipset,
PCI-e 1x, ~$30 USD) that do not negotiate gigabit on my cheap Linksys
switch from Windows, yet happily do so from Linux and FreeBSD, and
will always negotiate gigabit from any OS with my HP Procurve.

Cheers

Tom