It takes 10-20 seconds for my network card to achieve connection, which is annoyingly long. By this, I mean that, if I unplug my Ethernet cable then plug it right back in, it takes 10-20 seconds before the link light comes back on, and of course 10-20 seconds before I have a network connection again. I have a machine at work with the same hardware and OS that doesn't do this -- it's reconnection is nearly instantaneous. So, maybe it is a setting somewhere, but I haven't found it if so.
I have already gone into BIOS and disabled all of the "wake on [blah]" functionality for the network. That seemed to help a little (went from taking perhaps 20-30 seconds for reconnection to 10-20), but it is still longer than what I like.
The chip for the network functionality is a Broadcom BCM57788 (Broadcom Netlink Gigabit Ethernet). I have already installed the latest drivers for that chip, and it doesn't change the problem.
I have also gone into the card's advanced settings and tried turning off "wake on magic packet" and "wake on pattern match", neither of which changed the connection time issue at all. I have "allow this device to wake computer" in power management turned off already. Allowing the card to sleep or not makes no difference (as my test is done with the computer on).
Again, the odd thing is that I have another machine that is the same hardware, OS, etc., that doesn't exhibit this behavior. On that one, if you unplug and replug, you right away get the link light back on and network connectivity. Both machines use DHCP, as opposed to fixed IP address, but I don't think that matters, as the IP address lease obtained and lease expires well bracket my test, and the time it takes for the link light to come seems to be independent of whether or not the OS (Windows 7) is even running, as I have boot manager and can do the test when the machine is on, but the OS isn't running yet and still get the same issue.
Any suggestions?
