Windows Network Connection Speed Property

Question

Consider this rough network drawing:

   +-----------------------------------+
   |    Router - DHCP Server           |
   |-----------------------------------|
   |    Gigabit LAN ports              |
   |                                   |
   +--------------------+-------+------+
                        |       |
  +-------------------+ |   +---+------+
  |   Gigabit Switch  | |   |  PC-1    |
  |-------------------| |   |----------|
  |                   | |   |  10/100  |
  |                   | |   |    NIC   |
  +-+---+---+---------+ |   +----------+
    |   |   |           |
    |   |   +-----------+
    |   +----------------+
    |                    |
  +-+-----------+     +--+-----------+
  |    PC-2     |     |    PC-3      |
  |-------------|     |--------------|
  |             |     |              |
  | 10/100/1000 |     |  Unknown     |
  |    NIC      |     |     NIC      |
  +-------------+     +--------------+

I am currently at PC-2 and my connection status dialog should report 1.0 Gbps, correct?

Is it true that this only tells the part of the "network story"? By this I mean that the speed is judged based only on the connection between my PC and my network gateway (router in my case) that I am configured for?

The connection speed to other nodes in the network would have to be determined independent of this metric, correct?

What if I did not have a Gigabit switch - but a (Megabit?) switch between my PC and the router? This would result in Windows reporting a 100 Mbps connection, correct?

Answer 1

The 1.0Gbps you are seeing there is the link speed negotiated between the PC in question's network adapter and the switch. It actually has little to nothing to do with actual speeds you may encounter between you and other devices at any given time.

If you had a 100Mbps adapter or switch, then the highest speed it could negotiate at is 100Mbps, and if that's the case, then it would show 100MBps in there.

Answer 2

There are two different values here: link rate and actual network throughput. Your link rate is the negotiation rate between your PC NIC and the next hop (typically a switch, but not necessarily your gateway). This does not mean you will transfer at that rate, or even close to it, to anything past that first hop. The link rate is the maximum transfer rate between two physical hops on a network, and that will either be 10Gb (10000), 1Gb (1000), 100Mb (100) or 10Mb (10 - you'll rarely see this in modern network setups, but they're still out there). The actual network throughput between two physical points on a network will be throttled by the lowest link rate in the chain. So if you are going to have 1Gb to the switch and then 100Mb to the router, even though you report at 1Gb on your NIC, you'll never see transfer rates that high.

Answer 3

Yes, you are looking at the status for a particular network adapter on your computer. So, that connection speed applies only to that particular link in the network.

You could, in fact, have a second adapter on your computer (say a WiFi adapter) which could run at a completely different speed, even though they may be connected to the same overall network.