I tried two different cat6 cables directly connected between my two ubuntu machines. This one I ordered online: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002SQPDXS/ref=wms_ohs_product only achieves 100mbit speeds, but does appear to be supporting cross-talk (direct pc to pc), the other cat 6 cable, worked perfectly and gets the full 1gigabit speed.

Both tests were performed using ftp and checking the network monitor with direct pc to pc connection.

Did the product from amazon lie to me or do I need to manually set a setting somewhere in ubuntu for some cables? I had thought 10 quid for 20m of gigabit ethernet cable was a bit cheap, you get what you pay for...

Regards, Stu

Update: It seems that after rebooting, the device is set to 1000mbit sec when looking it up with

sudo ethtool eth0

However after a while, this will drop down to just 100, after which to reset it to 1000 again, I have to reboot, and simply unpugging and re-plugging in the cable doesn't do it.

I tried setting this in networking config file as suggested here:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
pre-up /usr/sbin/ethtool -s eth0 speed 1000 duplex full

but that resulted in my networking failing to start. Is there a problem with my 'auto-negotiation' or something? Can I manually override a setting to 1000mbit?