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I am downloading a huge file and was wondering on how to boost my Ethernet speed. I found this option called "Speed & Duplex" And there were a few options. Two of them were

1) 1.0 Gbps Full Duplex

2) Auto Negotiation (Which was on default)

I switched to 1.0 Gbps Full Duplex and used Task Manager to check my speed.

No difference...

So what does it do? And why do I see no difference?

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  • If you're downloading over a LAN, your best bet would be to put the file on a USB drive and transfer it that way. If you're downloading over the internet, chances are your LAN's ethernet isn't the bottleneck. You might try increasing TCP window size. This guy seems to have figured out one way to accomplish that.
    – Parthian Shot
    Feb 25, 2016 at 3:21

1 Answer 1

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2

In general, you always want to keep auto-negotiation turned on, unless the equipment on the other end is specifically set to a fixed speed.

If you turn auto-negotiation off on one end, and the other end has auto-negotiation turned on, the link may fall back to a slower speed, even perhaps as slow as 10 Mbit/s half duplex!

This is because the other side won't see any auto-negotiation, and therefore will fall back to a safe speed.

Even worse, using manual setup you can set up different settings on each end, leading to a link which will operate poorly or not at all.

The other end in this context will be the Ethernet switch you're hooked up to.

Short answer: If in doubt, turn auto-negotiation on, and don't manually try to force anything. You'll just create more problems for yourself if you do.

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