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dmesg |grep eth0
Here eth0 is the first network card. If you have additional cards, it will be named eth1, eth2 and so on. And here is the output of the above command :
eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at 0xf8cdcf00, 00:e0:4c:a1:41:d5, IRQ 16
eth0: Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8100B/8139D'
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x45E1
As you can see from the above listing, my ethernet card is a RealTek RTL8139 chipset based card on IRQ 16 (Interrupt Request). Its speed is 100 Mbps and is a full-duplex card. And the link is up.
As is the philosophy of Linux, there is more than one way of finding the same information. Linux also comes with a cute sounding tool called mii-tool which can also be used to get the same information about your network card.
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mii-tool -v eth0
eth0: negotiated 100baseTx-FD, link ok
product info: vendor 00:00:00, model 0 rev 0
basic mode: autonegotiation enabled
basic status: autonegotiation complete, link ok
capabilities: 100baseTx-FD 100baseTx-HD 10baseT-FD 10baseT-HD
advertising: 100baseTx-FD
link partner: 100baseTx-FD 100baseTx-HD 10baseT-FD 10baseT-HD flow-control
Here -v is verbose mode. From the above listed output, one can see that the ethernet card is working as a 100baseTX, FD (Full Duplex) card which can work in the following modes :
* 100 Mbps Speed (Full duplex or half duplex ) or
* 10 Mbps speed (Full duplex or half duplex).
And it uses autonegotiation to bring up the link. You can call the above device as a 10/100 NIC.
Another tool which also does the same thing is ethtool. Try the following command on your machine to see the output.
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ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ TP MII ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 100baseT/Full
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Speed: 100Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: MII
PHYAD: 32
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: on
Supports Wake-on: pumbg
Wake-on: d
Current message level: 0x00000007 (7)
Link detected: yes
Here full duplex, half duplex and auto-negotiation have the following meanings.
Full Duplex - Logic that enables concurrent sending and receiving. This is usually desirable and enabled when your computer is connected to a switch.
Half Duplex - This logic requires a card to only send or receive at a single point of time. When your machine is connected to a Hub, it auto-negotiates itself and uses half duplex to avoid collisions.
Auto-negotiation - This is the process of deciding whether to work in full duplex mode or half duplex mode. An ethernet card supporting autonegotiation will decide for itself which mode is the optimal one depending on the network it is attached to.
You can use following commands to set/change ethernet settings (please refer to the help/manual for full features list):
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ethtool -s eth0 autoneg off speed 100 duplex full
mii-tool -F 100baseTx-FD eth0
