Q: My husband formatted the hard drive on our desktop and now it won’t find the Ethernet card. The drivers are on the CD and it wont accept them. I don’t have Internet access from that computer but do have access from another. What do I do?
Q: I do not have an Ethernet card or hook up on my computer running Windows 98. Is there any way to still get connected to my cable Internet connection?
Q: How do I connect 2 computers together in order to share data/application using the Ethernet cable?
Q: I have a Toshiba M-10 laptop running Windows XP Pro and IE8. The laptop drops cable ethernet connection when cover is moved. I have a 4″ block under the back now and cover tipped away back and it holds fairly well. I checked all cables and usual stuff. Any idea why it disconnects?
Q: Do Ethernet cards have any effect on ADSL Internet speed?
A: The simple is no, your Ethernet card does not effect the speed of the connection between the DLS modem and your Internet service provider (ISP). There is also very little chance that your DLS speed is after than your Ethernet network card.
So lets get a little more specific and figure out if you can get a little more out of your Internet connection. The normal or average speed of a DSL connection is 1.5 Mbps but they can go much faster. For example my DSL connection is 6.0 Mbps.
Ethernet network cards come in 3 main speeds, 10/100/1000 Mbps. All of these are faster than the average DSL connection so your Ethernet card is probably not slowing you down.
If you have a really old network card, a 10 Mbps card, and it does not have a full duplex mode, that is sending and receiving of data at the same time, then your experience could be better than it is. What this means is if you are sending data, uploading an MP3 file, and you are downloading at the same time, your Ethernet network card has to do one or the other, it cannot do both. So by switching to a card that supports full duplexing you can see better performance.
Also, most modern date Ethernet cards now support technology that allows the data to go from the Ethernet network card directly to your hard drive without going though the CPU. Again most modern computers do this so that helps to speed things up because then downloading items wont actually use up your processor and it allows you to do other things.
I hope you have found this helpful beyond the basic answer that your Ethernet network card is probably considerably faster than your DSL connection but there are some technologies out there that do help a little here and there.
Q: Can two computers running Windows XP be connected to the same modem? The modem has an Ethernet and a USB connection and we would like to know if it would work without having to buy anything extra.
A: In order to connect two computers to the same modem, whether cable or DSL, you need to use a router. When a computer is connected directly to the modem the IP address is assigned to that machine which prevents you from simply swapping two computers on and off the modem without powering down the modem each time. When a router is connected to the modem the IP address is assigned to instead. At this point multiple computers can be used off of the same connection and/or swapped on and off. Unfortunately you cannot use the Ethernet connection for one computer and the USB for the other.
To use the router all you need to do is unplug your modem for a minute, connect the router to the modem with an Ethernet cable and plug the modem back in. When the modem is powered off it resets itself and reassigns the IP address to the router. Now you can plug both computers into the router and share the same connection. This works whether you are physically plugging in the computers to the router or using it wirelessly. If you are choosing to physically plug them in just remember that there is a difference between a switch and a router. A router is capable of storing an IP address a switch is not. You can buy a wired router for around $50.00 in most stores and a wireless one for around $70.00 for a G series. All wireless routers have the ports in the back for physical connections.
