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White vs. Amber (Orange) Ethernet port status LED
Model R7300DST (AC 1900) One of the ports blinks Amber/Orange vs. white. Support says, "The LED color indicates the speed: white for Gigabit Ethernet connections and amber for 100 Mbps or 10 Mbps...
> I know how to calc internet down/up speed [...]
More accurately, you know how to run some program which measures it.
> [...] but how can you determine the speed of data to and from
> different PC's on the peer to peer network?
There may be fancy programs available to do this, but I normally just
transfer a file (which is not trivially small), and measure the time. I
typically have an FTP server running everywhere, and binary FTP is a
pretty low-overhead protocol, so I normally time an FTP transfer. Many
FTP client programs have built-in time recording; Wget, for example:
pro3$ wget ftp://alp-l/tru64/T64V51BB27AS0006.tgz
--2017-09-12 13:51:01-- ftp://alp-l/tru64/T64V51BB27AS0006.tgz
=> 'T64V51BB27AS0006.tgz'
Resolving alp-l... 10.0.0.9
Connecting to alp-l|10.0.0.9|:21... connected.
Logging in as anonymous ... Logged in!
==> SYST ... done. ==> PWD ... done.
==> TYPE I ... done. ==> CWD (0) tru64 ... done.==> CWD (1) tru64 ... done.
==> SIZE T64V51BB27AS0006.tgz ... done.
==> PASV ... done. ==> RETR T64V51BB27AS0006.tgz ... done.
T64V51BB27AS0006.tg [ <=> ] 205.60M 61.5MB/s in 3.4s
2017-09-12 13:51:05 (59.7 MB/s) - 'T64V51BB27AS0006.tgz' saved [215586563]
Note that "59.7 MB/s" would be about 478Mb/s (59.7 MB/s * 8bit/byte).
Of course, this method may also incur sloth from the file I/O if that's
slower than the network I/O (which may be true in that test). A fancy
program could send dummy data, and discard what it receives, and so geta network speed value which is independent of any disk I/O.
The effort you put into any measurement depends on how much you care
about the result. I typically don't care much about such data.
> What makes no sense is that I don't have an internet connection that
> anywhere near supports gigabit speed. So why the amber light?
No, it makes sense. A LAN port LED shows the speed of the connection
between the router and the connected device. This is independent of the
speed of your Internet connection (the connection between the router's
WAN/Internet port and your ISP).
You may not care, but the devices on your LAN can talk to each other
as well as to the Internet. In that case the communication speed would
depend on the LAN port speed(s), not on the speed of the Internet
connection.
I do care since I do automated backups between the connected machines.
Why would one Ethernet port be blinking at 100 Mbps and the other at gigabyte?
The WiFi is still limited to 100 Mbps?
Mark
> Why would one Ethernet port be blinking at 100 Mbps and the other at
> gigabyte?
Nowadays, Ethernet port speeds are usually negotiated by the devices
being connected (when they're first connected). With my weak psychic
powers, I have no idea what your devices ("machines") are, nor what
their Ethernet speed capabilities might be. (Note, too, "gigabit" v.
"gigabyte". It's a factor of eight.)
If you think that a device has gigabit speed capability but it has
negotiated a sub-gigabit speed link, then you might try disconnecting
and reconnecting the cable. In some computers, the Ethernet interface
gets its power from the standby source, so it's always on, even when the
rest of the system is off ("off"). (This allows a Wake-on-LAN feature,
where a special network command message can switch on the main system
power.) The link speed for a gigabit interface in standby mode may be
only 100MHz. It should get renegotiated (to gigabit speed?) when themain system starts, but that could fail.
> The WiFi is still limited to 100 Mbps?
Wireless speeds depend on many factors, including which radio band
you use (2.4GHz or 5GHz), local signal conditions, interference, and so
on, plus the intrinsic speed limits of the hardware. From a router
which is advertised as offering "AC1900" speeds, I'd be a little
disappointed if 100Mb/s were the best that you could get.Thanks, very informative.
I know how to calc internet down/up speed but how can you determine the speed of data to and from different PC's on the peer to peer network?