It is difficult for modern owners of personal computers to imagine that just about 5-10 years ago, a motherboard with an integrated network card was more a curiosity than a rule. Currently, the situation has changed dramatically, which cannot but rejoice, because there is no need to purchase a separate network card and look for a place in the system unit for its installation, impairing the circulation of cooling components of air flows. In addition, users who need to connect several computers to a local network need to select and configure a driver for a network card. Although almost every hardware product comes with software, nevertheless, compatibility issues can sometimes occur. For example, the driver for a Realtek network card cannot automatically correctly determine the required connection parameters, as a result, the computers "do not see each other" and you have to perform manual configuration. Perhaps this is a fee for versatility, because most cards now support speeds of 100 Mbit / s and 1 Gbit / s.
The driver for the network card allows you to configure the network adapter as needed. The indicated problem, when two (or more) computers cannot establish a connection at a speed of 100 Mb / s, is solved quite simply: the duplex mode should be followed and the speed should be forced to be limited to 100 Mb, and not leave auto-negotiation. This parameter can also be useful to an Internet user, in whom the connection occurs just through the LAN cable.
A significant share of the modern market is for cards manufactured by Realtek. This is a well-known Taiwanese electronic chip company. The correct pricing policy caused a wide distribution of its products: if a high-performance and high-quality network card is required, then this is one price category, but for the mass segment “cheap” chips are intended. They cope quite well with their tasks, but most of the functions are implemented programmatically by the Realtek network card driver. One of the benefits of popularity is the built-in support from operating systems. By installing the Windows system (and even Linux) on a computer with a network adapter from this manufacturer, the user receives a fully functional network interface. The reason for this is the fact that the driver for the Realtek network card is already included in the system. It may be required to install it specially in two cases: on the motherboard there is one of the latest chips, the driver for which is not in the Windows distribution files; You need to update an existing driver for the network card.
Let's dwell on the update in more detail. Unfortunately, most users ignore this feature and in vain. As mentioned above, in the budget versions of the cards, many functions for processing the data stream are assigned to the software component (driver). It is easy to guess that with active use, the load on the central processor increases significantly. The company has its own site and periodically places on it updated (fixed and improved) drivers for popular versions of network cards. By downloading and installing it, you can reduce the load, speed up work, solve some other problems with the network connection. In addition, manual optimization options can be added in the settings of the new driver. To get to the settings window, you need to open the “My Computer” properties, proceed to the “Network Adapters” category in the device manager and select your Realtek card. In the "Advanced" section, you can make the desired changes.