How to detect ethernet network speed in Windows

Ideal for Windows Server Core or Nano: Detect the ethernet network speed using PowerShell or WMI is ideal for Windows Server Core or Nano. If you ever need to lookup the speed of your ethernet network card in Windows on the command-line, use one of the following WMIC commands on your PowerShell prompt:

PowerShell snippet to detect ethernet network speed in Windows

An easy to use PowerShell snippet to detect ethernet network speed in Windows Server (Core & Nano including) is:

wmic NIC where "NetEnabled='true'" get "Name,Speed"

This prints out the name of the interface and configured speed, like:

PS C:\Users\janr> wmic NIC where "NetEnabled='true'" get "Name,Speed"
Name                                    Speed
Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet #2  1000000000

You can also easily get the network adapter’s MAC address using:

wmic NIC where "NetEnabled='true'" get MACAddress

That was easy, now wasn’t it?! 🙂 Of course you can also use PowerShell’s Get-NetAdapter cmdlet. The Get-NetAdapter cmdlet gets the basic network adapter properties, like:

PS C:\> (Get-NetAdapter -Name Ethernet).LinkSpeed
1 Gbps

You can lookup the available interfaces and its names with (Get-NetAdapter).Name