100 Mbps. There are several speeds for Ethernet; the term "Fast Ethernet" is used for the 100 Mbps variety.
The version of Ethernet that runs at 100 Mbps is called Fast Ethernet, specifically defined by the IEEE 802.3u standard. Fast Ethernet can operate over twisted pair cables (using 100BASE-TX) and fiber optic cables (using 100BASE-FX). It was widely adopted in the late 1990s, providing a significant speed improvement over the original 10 Mbps Ethernet.
Fast Ethernet runs at 100Mbit and requires CAT5e cables. Gigabit Ethernet is 1,000Mbit and requires CAT6 cables
iSCSI runs over Ethernet so it is limited by the speed of your network. iSCSI theoretically runs at 100Mbit, 1000Mbit or 10000Mbit. However there are many other factors that influence its actual speed.
If you want greater speed, why not use gigabit ethernet? Just remember that all the devices and cabling must be capable of that speed or you won't actually see that speed.
Ethernet is the most popular networking technology used in LANs. Fast Ethernet is used to refer to any version of Ethernet that meets or surpasses the 100 Mbps transfer speed.
The best way to test Ethernet speed is via a LAN speed test. Totusoft offers such a speed test, as do Nuts About Nets' NetStress and ReadError's NetMeter
The 'Ether' part of Ethernet denotes that the system is not meant to be restricted for use on only one medium type, copper cables, fibre cables and even radio waves can be used. Fast Ethernet Network was developed as an upgrade to traditional Ethernet Networking. Fast Ethernet improved traditional Ethernet by increasing transfer rates 10 times, from 10 Megabit to 100 Megabit speed. Gigabit Ethernet Network is an upgrade on Fast Ethernet Network equivalent to Fast Ethernet Networks improvement over Fast Ethernet Network, offering speeds of 1000 Megabits (1 Gigabit) Cisco have a good document with diagrams and a reasonable amount of depth that answers your questions on 10/100/1000 Ethernet. See related link. Ethernet card would be 10Mbps (mega bauds per second) Fast Ethernet card would be 100Mbps. Most ethernet cards sold today are Fast Ethernet or better. Look for the 100Mbps or the 10/100Mbps specification. The only difference between the both is the speed. Hence both cards are basically the same using the same technology except the fast Ethernet card can run on 10/100mb/s, an astonishing speed. Original 10Base2, 10Base5 and 10baseT Ethernet (thin coaxial cable, thick coaxial cable and twisted pair, respectively) specifications offered a 10Mbit/second throughput (data transfer rate). Although 1 Byte is 8 bits, 10Mbits in practice doesn't mean 1.25MBytes/second, because there's some extra information transferred. On average it can be seen as a ~1MByte/second link speed. Then new standards appeared, some of them exotic (like 100VG AnyLan), but the new Ethernet standard was 100baseTX, which used twisted pair (like 10baseT, but with slightly higher quality requirements - Category 5 cable). It has been called Fast Ethernet, as it offered 100Mbit/sec transfer speed, a 10-fold improvement. Usually all the network equipment can talk both 10baseT and 100baseTX (for example network switches have "10/100" ports). But this was not enough - then came a next speed-up: the 1000baseTX, still running on twisted pair, but with even higher cable quality requirements, offering 1000Mbit/s transfer speed, thus called Gigabit Ethernet: 1000 Mega = 1 Giga.
Topology means how the network is physically wired; it doesn't have anything to do with speed necessarily. Did you mean Fast Ethernet (100BaseTX)?
The speed of 100 MB Ethernet, commonly referred to as Fast Ethernet, is 100 megabits per second (Mbps). This standard supports data transmission over twisted-pair cables and fiber optics. Fast Ethernet is widely used in local area networks (LANs) for connecting devices such as computers and switches. It is capable of handling typical network traffic demands but has largely been superseded by faster standards like Gigabit Ethernet.
No, you don't need it, but speed is a nice thing to have in a LAN.
Just properties of the network card. The speed of connection is there. Knowing the speed and capabilities of the network card you are looking at, you can find out which interface is used at another end. PS: The speed you will see is the highest both devices can support in the same time.
arjean