10mb network connection on guest OS

[Mintz]

I've just installed ESXi 4.0 on a server which has 6 physical Gigabit NICs I've only enabled one of them for the moment. I created a new VM with a clean installation of Windows XP Pro and I was quite suprised to find that when XP finally finished installing, it reported that the NIC speed was 10mbit. Although the physical NIC on the server is a Gigabit NIC its connected to a 10/100 switch and the lisghts on the connection indicate that the ESXi host NIC is operating at 100mbit. Is there any reason why the guest OS should only see a 10mbit connection?

Regards

Eugene Gill

[AWo]

1. Ignore the reported speed in Windows.

2. Install the VMware Tools within the guest (highly recommended) as these gives you (beside other important things) the appropriate network drivers.

If you not use the "vlance" virtual NIC type, you should be fine and faster than 10 MBit/s regardless of what is reported. The speed between the guest and the virtual switch ist not related to the speed of the physical NIC's connected to the switch. That is always the highest possible speed depending on the bus and the processor.

AWo

VCP / VMware vEXPERT 2009

[bulletprooffool · Accepted solution]

I agree with the previous post, but it also worth verifying your network connection speed on your host (Click host, configuration tab, then networking) to see what speed has been negotiated.

[byoung111]

I've had this happen in the past and installing VMware Tools resolves this problem. You can also go the other way by installing the VMXNET3 NIC after you install VMWare Tools, and the interface in Windows will report 10GB.