Checking Your Bandwidth

When you are working on a system and it seems slow when you are connecting to the Internet there can be several reasons.  One is that your machine is using bandwidth that will not be available for other tasks.  For example, here is an illustration of a download that is consuming about 165 KB/s of bandwidth.

Of course slow bandwith is relative to other issues as well.  Like, what is the bandwidth capacity of your network card.


Install ethtool as root

sudo apt-get install ethtool

Become root with:

su - root

ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ TP ]
Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Full
Advertised pause frame use: No
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Speed: 1000Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: Twisted Pair
PHYAD: 0
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: on
MDI-X: Unknown
Supports Wake-on: g
Wake-on: d
Current message level: 0x0000003f (63)
Link detected: yes


With that command you can see that the network card can run at
10/100/1000 and is running at full capacity.  It is also "Full" duplex
which means it can talk both ways at the same time.

There are other factors that impact bandwidth speeds like other users
on the network and limitations at your router, your connection to the
Internet.  other factors, may be slow resources on the sites you are
accessing.