How to detect ethernet network speed in Windows

Detect the ethernet network speed using PowerShell or WMI is perfect for Windows Server Core. 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:

Detect ethernet network speed in Windows using PowerShell

One of the methods to check the network adapter speed via PowerShell is to use Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) interface. An easy to use PowerShell snippet to detect the 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 (Media Access Control) address using:

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

List all MAC addresses of all Hyper-V Virtual Machines

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. Type the following command to determine the connection speed for all the Ethernet and Wi-Fi adapters:

Get-NetAdapter

and to print the LinkSpeed for a specific network adapter name, use:

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

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

Get Wi-Fi speed in Windows 11/10

If you’d like to know your current Wi-Fi speed in Windows 11 or Windows 10, then:

• Look up the interface name
• Get LinkSpeed value in PowerShell

PS C:\Users\jan> (Get-NetAdapter).Name
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth-netwerkverbinding
PS C:\Users\jan> (Get-NetAdapter -Name "Wi-Fi").LinkSpeed
433.3 Mbps
PS C:\Users\jan>