Guest Operating System on VMWare Reports 10Mbps Speed when Host Adapter is 100Mbps or Higher (856)

Details

Why does my guest operating system report that it is connected at 10Mbps even though I have a 100Mbps or 1000Mbps network adapter in my host computer?

Solution

The speed reported to the guest operating system is not related to the actual speed of the physical network connection. The guest operating system passes data packets as fast as it can based on host CPU load and the physical Ethernet bandwidth on the host, so you can ignore the LAN connection speed that the guest reports.

To verify this, use FTP or SMB in the guest operating system to transfer a file. Check the transfer rate, which should show that the virtual network adapter is not limited to the 10Mbps limit reported in the guest, as your external network is faster than 10Mbps. You see this 10Mbps speed because the virtual network adapter is an AMD PCnet II compatible NIC, which by definition is a 10Mbps NIC. Even though the virtual NIC identifies itself as 10Mbps, it actually runs at the higher rate of the host's NIC.

Ref:http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=856