[TriLUG] Wired ethernet hub/switch that reports link speeds

[David Burton via TriLUG]

This seems like a dumb question, but I can't find the answer.

Does anyone know of a 10/100/1000 or 10/100/1000/10000 ethernet hub/switch
that reports the link connection speeds on its ports? Does such a thing
even exist?

There are lots of these things on the market
<https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=network+hub+-usb+-dual+%28gigabit%2C1000%2C%221000M%22%2C%221000mbps%22%2C%2210gbps%22%29>.
All of them auto-negotiate the connection speed, but none that I've found
will tell you what the negotiated speed actually is. The best I've found
was one which shows a blue (or maybe green?) LED for ports connected at
1000 mbps, or amber when connected at either 10 mbps or 100 mbps, but no
distinction between 10 and 100. (And nothing that I've found shows any
indication of whether it's running normal full-duplex, or half-duplex.)

[Context/background: my Internet download speed inexplicably dropped from
about 70 mbps (until a few weeks ago) to about 9.5 mpbs (now), when my old
supposedly-gigabit T-Link router is connected. Yet it gets 70 mbps when the
router is bypassed. One clue is that, even though both modem and router are
supposedly gigabit, the Arris modem indicates "10 or 100 mbps" (amber LED)
for its connection to the router, and the 9.5 mbps download throughput
suggests to me that the link speed is probably at 10, instead of 100. But
how to tell? I wanted to check the connection speed, and I realized that I
have no way to do that. The modem doesn't distinguish between 10 and 100
mbps, and the router doesn't report anything at all about ethernet link
speeds. Neither the router nor the modem status pages report the ethernet
link speeds. I thought that if I connected a hub/switch between modem and
router, I could use it to determine the link speeds, but nothing I own
reports it, and I can't find one that does. If I connect my computer
directly to the modem, the ethernet connects at 1000 mbps, so my suspicion
is that the problem is in the router. I have a new router on order, but I'm
still curious about what's going on.]

Dave