Which 10 gig network card to buy if at all

[SweetZakyZak]

I just wanted to start off by saying I appreciate any help that I can get. Recently due to the amount of devices that I am running in my home between myself, the wife, and two kids I upgraded our internet speed to 500mbs down and 500mbs up. I didn't do any research beforehand and my b550 motherboard has 2.5gig networking so I'm  getting around 100mbs down when I do a speed test and this running directly from my router to the PC. What I am trying to figure out is if it would be worth it to get a 10 gig network card so I can utilize more of that 500mbs connection that I have or if that would even make much of a difference overall? I am fairly inexperienced with networking so any advice or help would be amazing.

[Electronics Wizardy]

The 2.5gbe nic in your board can easily max out the connection. The 100m limit makes me think the link speed is limited by a bad cable. Id try a new cable first. If the nic is fine, a gigabit nic will be plenty here.

[mariushm]

You don't need a 10 gbps network card.

 

Your network card is already capable of up to 2.5 gbps (2500 mbps) BUT the device the network card is connected to (the router) must also support 2.5 gbps in order to communicate between each other at 2.5 gbps.  If the router is only capable of 1 gbps, then the network card will switch down to 1 gbps.

 

If you have a bad cable or some pins inside the ethernet connectors are bent or broken, then your card  will downgrade to 100 mbps because a 100 mbps connection can be established with only 4 wires out of the 8 wires inside the cable.

 

Sometimes there's such issues if you have a bad network card driver installed, or if you have some odd software (firewalls, antiviruses with built in network protection etc)

 

Check to see if your network card is connecting to the router at 1 gbps or 2.5 gbps - an easy way would be to share a folder on your computer, and then go to your wife's computer and try to copy a big file from your shared folder. If the transfer speed is higher than 12 MB/s (100 mbps) then your network card connects at 1 gbps or higher.

In that case, go to the motherboard manufacturer website, at your motherboard's

[SweetZakyZak]

I didn't think about the router aspect of it and I'm willing to bet that's where my bottleneck is coming from. We have a Belkin router that I believe is pushing close to 10 years old at this point so I'm probably due for an upgrade there as well.

[Alex Atkin UK]

5 hours ago, SweetZakyZak said:

I didn't think about the router aspect of it and I'm willing to bet that's where my bottleneck is coming from. We have a Belkin router that I believe is pushing close to 10 years old at this point so I'm probably due for an upgrade there as well.

Very likely.  Older or low-end routers may only have 100Mbit ports and even if they are Gigabit their CPU might choke on on a service that fast.  You need a pretty decent router to push those kinds of speeds.

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, jugganautz said:

You could try connecting directly to the modem. If you get the full speed then, you know it is likely the router. A ten year old router may not have 1gig speed on it's ports. 1gig is all you need and that is easy to come by today on a router.

Sadly not so, having 1Gig on the built-in switch does not guarantee the router can move 1Gig of data from WAN to LAN.

There's plenty of routers out there that have 1Gig ports and can only handle well under 500Mbit never mind Gigabit.  A router needs to have Gigabit ports to push more than 100Mbit, so all having Gigabit ports really means is it probably can do above 100Mbit, not specifically how much.

 

Frustratingly few manufacturers actually tell you what NAT speed (the speed it can move data between WAN and LAN) they are capable of.  There's also a difference between routed speed (moving data between public IP address, rarely used for home broadband especially today where IPv4 addresses are in short supply) and NAT speed (converting between a single public IP address and multiple LAN IP addresses).