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Gigabit card only connecting at 100mbps? Here’s the fix.

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Servers and Networking April 24, 2017April 1, 2024Broadcom, cat5e, IEEE, intel, network cables, networking equipment, PCI-X, pcie, Windows 10

I finished a modernization project where I replaced all of my 100-megabit gear with gigabit-capable gear, including my cabling and router and access points. But after I replaced my last 100-megabit switch, I found we had two Windows desktops refusing to speed up. Here’s how to fix a gigabit card only connecting at 100mbps.

First, if you know you’re not connecting at gigabit, you probably already know how to do this. But if not, here’s how to check your network speed in Windows 10. Then here’s how to fix it. After all, you want to enjoy the advantages of a gigabit LAN if you have the hardware.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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Best Pfsense hardware

Dave Farquhar Hardware, security March 13, 2017July 11, 2018Broadcom, intel, kingston, micron, pfsense, podcast

The best Pfsense hardware is rather subjective. I think the ideal Pfsense box should deliver solid performance while being affordable.

Dave Farquhar

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Lenovo Thinkcentre M58 upgrades

Dave Farquhar Hardware February 10, 2017June 5, 2018Broadcom, intel, Intel Core, lenovo, nvidia, Windows 10

I picked up an off-lease Lenovo Thinkcentre M58 over the weekend. Based on the date code on the hard drive, this one dates to 2010. It’s a serviceable machine. You have a few options when it comes to Lenovo Thinkcentre M58 upgrades. I wouldn’t necessarily use one as a basis for a $100 gaming PC but you can make a great general purpose home PC out of one.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Save money on a PCIe dual NIC

Dave Farquhar Hardware November 18, 2016July 5, 2018Broadcom, dell, hp, intel, PCI Express, pcie

I’ve written before how to get a standard PCI dual NIC for a low, low price–but what about a PCIe dual NIC? PCI Express needs love too, of course.

It turns out it’s not hard to find a good, cheap PCIe dual NIC either.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Need a good, cheap dual gigabit NIC? I have just the thing.

Dave Farquhar Hardware July 22, 2015July 13, 2016Broadcom, hp, intel, PCI-X, pcie

If you need gigabit ports for your home server or router project and you’re short on available expansion slots, I have just the thing. Home sysadmins have known for a while that you can get cheap PCI-X Intel NICs and run them in PCI mode, but you may not know that you can find the very same thing by searching Ebay for HP 7170 and it’s usually cheaper. It’s not rare to find them for $7, shipped.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

How to find inexpensive routers to run DD-WRT

Dave Farquhar DD-WRT, Servers and Networking April 1, 2015August 3, 2017Broadcom, cisco, DDWRT, linksys, TL, WAN, wrt54g

I’ve been using and recommending DD-WRT for years, but it’s getting harder to find inexpensive routers to run DD-WRT. Many inexpensive routers now use non-Broadcom chipsets that DD-WRT and other third-party firmware don’t support well, or at all.

But there’s still a way to get inexpensive, compatible routers that isn’t likely to change any time soon.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Upgrading an HP Mini 110 to Linux Mint 17

Dave Farquhar Linux September 3, 2014August 3, 2017Broadcom, hp, ISO, Linux Mint, old windows, ubuntu, USB flash drive, windows 7, Windows XP

Over the Labor Day weekend I decided to upgrade my HP Mini 110 netbook to Linux Mint 17. The Mini 110 can handle Windows 7, but Linux Mint doesn’t cost any money and I figure a Linux box is more useful to me than yet another Windows box. There are some things I do that are easier to accomplish in Linux than in Windows. Plus, I’m curious how my two young sons will react to Linux.

Linux Mint, if you’re not familiar with it, is a Ubuntu derivative that includes a lot of consumer-friendly features, like including drivers and codecs and other common software that aren’t completely open source. It’s not a Linux distribution for the Free Software purist, but having options is one of the nice things about Linux in 2014.

Linux Mint includes a lot of useful software, so once you get it installed, you’re up and running with a useful computer with minimal effort.

Dave Farquhar

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The world’s fastest budget PC

Dave Farquhar Hardware February 25, 2014February 23, 2014Broadcom, christmas, compaq, firewall, hp, intel, Libre Office, Micro Center, new hardware, office 2010, PCI Express, pcie, pentium d, pfsense, SUBSYSTEM, windows 7, Windows XP

So, a relative’s PC was getting a bit aged, and runs Windows XP, barely, so I talked them into an upgrade. I noticed that Micro Center had HP/Compaq DC5700s for $99. They were standard issue office PCs a few years ago, and there are a lot of them in the refurb channel. We went and got one over the weekend.

“What are you going to do with that?” the sales rep asked. “We only use them as cash registers.”

“Word processing,” I said.

“You sure you want to run Windows 7 on an 8-year-old PC?”

“I wrote the book on running Windows on older PCs. Literally. It’ll be fine.”

I hate calling rank like that, but sometimes it’s what you have to do.

And really, for $99, it’s awfully good. Web browsing is plenty fast, Libre Office runs fine on it, and think about it. Windows 7 retails for $100-$109. So it’s like getting the hardware for free. Or Windows for free, however you want to look at it.

Dave Farquhar

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Disabling WPS by upgrading to DD-WRT

Dave Farquhar DD-WRT, security January 13, 2012August 14, 2016Broadcom, linksys, VLAN, wrt54g

Tom Gatermann told me he succeeded in disabling WPS by upgrading his Linksys router–I didn’t ask what model and probably shouldn’t post that anyway–with DD-WRT.

Explicitly disabling WPS in DD-WRT is unnecessary because DD-WRT doesn’t implement WPS at all–which is a good thing. There’s no setting to look for, it’s just automatic.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Flaky networking? Suspect cheap NICs

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Servers and Networking April 3, 2011March 2, 20223com, Broadcom, d-link, hp, intel, netgear

It was 1998. I was getting ready to network my two PCs, so I asked my friendly neighborhood networking professional what to buy. He didn’t hesitate. “Intel or 3Com,” he said. “Cheap NICs will talk, but they’ll start acting flaky after a while, dropping packets in the middle of transfers, stuff like that.”

I couldn’t afford 3Com or Intel at the time, so I bought a cheap “SOHOware” brand bundle that included two 10/100 NICs, a hub, and cables for around $150. A comparable first-tier setup would have run me twice that. The hub died after a couple of years. The cards fared better. “After a while” took 11 years or so to come, and I finally got sick enough of it to retire my last one.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

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