Hi,
I'm thinking of getting a gigabit ethernet card for my computer (right now I'm using onboard 10/100mbps lan). I am using Slackware 10.2 and am fine with tweaking things, I just don't know a lot about what would be required to get the maximum potential from this new card. Can I just plug it in, setup the correct device and off I go? Or will there be things I need to do to make sure it is running at optimal speed (I had read point to point is better for direct connect to a modem, things like that).
Just looking for some general guidance here before I spend the money

Well, first off, in order to see any performance boost, the other end of the connection and all points in between must support that speed. For example, I use gig-E on my LAN because my RAID fileserver has gig-E. Even there, hard drives can be limiting.

What kind of performance boost are you looking for? NET surfing? Not going to happen.

No, my net surfing speed is fine and all that, and wouldn't be the main reason for upgrading. It is mostly because I want to do some minor hosting off my computer, and for some reason (and based on a bit of research) my current 10/100mbps caps out at around 80-90kb/s download speed for the other person (just tested it with a friend, and those were the speeds they were getting). So gigabit should allow higher than that, or so was my hope. I'm still pretty unclear on all of it, and the marketing spiel of the big NIC makers does little to clear it up.

No, that sounds about right for the standard upload of a conventional home broadband connection.