How can a single ethernet cable running to a gigabit switch provide multiple connections with gigabit speeds?
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It doesn’t, not really. Think of it like water pipes, where the speed rating is just the diameter of the pipe. You can split a single 1 inch pipe into multiple 1 inch pipes, but you can still only get so much water from that one source pipe. Now, the water isn’t going to be flowing all the time though. If only one of the pipes has an open valve, then you get the same amount of water flowing through it as the source pipe. But if two are open, the pressure drops and you only get half as much out of each.
Similarly, you can get gigabit speeds to any one given device, as long as nothing else is actively sending or recieving data at the moment, but if multiple devices are “talking” at the same time, the speed will slow down for each individual device. The gigabit rating on each port is just the maximum speed that the port itself can handle over that one connection.
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