How to get the network card speed in Solaris 9

To determine the network card speed in Solaris 9 use the ndd utility.

First list the NIC installed and active on the Solaris 9 server.

# ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=1000849 mtu 8232 index 1
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000
hme0: flags=1000843 mtu 1500 index 2
inet 162.10.1.11 netmask ffff0000 broadcast 162.10.255.255
ether 8:0:20:c4:8c:87

There is one network card installed and active, hme0.

# ndd -get /dev/hme link_mode
1

Interpretation:
0 — half-duplex
1 — full-duplex

# ndd -get /dev/hme link_speed
1

Interpretation:
0 — 10 Mbit
1 — 100 Mbit
1000 — 1 Gbit

To query a different NIC, such as hme1, set the “instance” to 1, and then perform the link_mode and link_speed queries above.

# ndd -set /dev/hme instance 1

The ndd commands above must be run as root.