Atomic Systems

Is a Gigabit Ethernet some sort of broadband and/or dial up modem?

Does this answer your question?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_Ethernet

Google is your friend

I've already been there, but still don't know. Bit hard to understand.

It is the maximum speed for the Ethernet (local network) port on your machine. The older standards were 10 and 100 and a Gigabyte-standard system will simply negotiate down to the maximum speed of the available connection. The network in my house is 100 standard but the media-centre PC and my new laptop each have gigabyte ports and they work seamlessly.

If you have the kind of broadband modem that plugs directly into the network port then, again, the port will negotiate the fastest common speed with it and you should be none the wiser. You shouldn't need to do anything to make that connection work, beyond installing any drivers on the computer, if any, that the modem needs for its own operation.

Keith

To clarify.
It would speed up your internal network, useful if you have a network attached disk drive for instance.
I have a gigabit network and I can transfer files at about 15mb/sec (based on a test I just did on a 400mb file.)

It will not speed up your broadband connection.