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The NIC provides a high speed data transferr connection to your computer. These connections are used for many purposes from making a network(to share files, or play games with others), to linking to high speed internet. The NIC looks something like a large phone jack (called an RJ-45 jack), and the wire used for it looks similar to large phone wire.You may notice some ethernet cards have lights on them to allow you to know when you are connected to a network and sometimes even tell you how fast your connection is.
NICs can transferr data at several rates of speed usually measued in Megebits per second(MB/s), common speeds are 10MB/s,100MB/s,and 1000MB/s(which is 1Gigabit/second or GB/s). 10 GB/s ethernet cards are currently being researched but are not yet available to the public.
Most High speed internet (HSI) connections are usually limited to 1 to 3 MB/s, which means these Network interface cards are more than capable of handling the speed of HSI, and makes them an ideal choice for that. Network lines can be connected to hubs and linked to many other computers, allowing you to share files, play games, or even share the internet with multiple computes, and a fast speed.
NICs are being built into most new motherboards,however, some computers still do not have one, they can be added by using an expansion slot (usually PCI), and work just as well, Even many older computers had ethernet cards in the ISA slot but they could not reach the extreme speeds todays ones do (usually around 10MB/s).