First cable NIC cards are 10/100Mbps standard.
That analysis isn\'t evident in my case. My ISP (Optimum Online aka Cablevision) happens to be the best in the country. It\'s only offered in the NYC and scattered parts of NJ and CT. I get superior downloads and uploads, at least 2MB up and down on average. It gets close to 4-5 in evenings when the peak is down
I am on cable and I get those speeds quite often. Also as they add more nodes to your LAN the slower your speeds are going to get. Cable is run on a logical bus topology so the more people on that "line" the slower it will be.
Also, now on alot of web sites are restricting how fast you download from there sites, So that the fast connections are not sukin up the bandwidth and handcuffing the 56kers out there.