Questions about cable speed and hardware, help!!!!

[svaillan]

PLAESE HELP !!!! I just hooked up a few days ago a cable connection through Comcast. I had problems with the install CD but Tech support set it up by phone from their end. My question is I have an Asus motherboard with one RJ45 port and with a built in 1394 card and LAN card. The wierd thing is if I look at the 1394 network connection info it says connected at 400Mbps. But if I veiw the LAN network connection info it says 100Mbps. But when I access the internet and watch the status of the 2 cards the one that is connected at 100Mbps reads that its Trans. and Rec. data. But the 1394 card that is conected at 400Mbps reads that its not Trans or Rec. any data. Is this correct or should I be getting my data through the faster of the 2. Comcast told me that I should be well above 100Mbps. Yet data only goes through the card that is connected at 100Mbps. And I only have one connection on the back of my PC. What is going wrong if anything and how can I change it to get the faster connection? Thx all Steve

[Confused]

You don't have anything (and won't have anything connected to the 1394 firewire port http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/I/IEEE_1394.html ). You are using the ethernet connection. The 100 figure you are seeing is the speed of the of the NIC and is Mbps which is a lot faster than your cable connection. Your cable connection will be measured in Kbps.

You can go to www.pcpitstop.com and run their bandwidth test to get a measure of your download speed.
Chas

[RedKangaroo]

You don't get a faster connection going though firewire (IEEE 1394.) Your cable, as Confused mentioned, is much slower than both your ethernet and firewire, so it will be limited by your cable speed. Meaning that it doesn't matter which one you use, but I've never heard of internet through firewire (cause no one sane has internet that fast) so you're fine going through the ethernet. Heck, you could even go through USB, it doesn't matter cause all of those are way faster than your cable speed.