LAN port speed on Expensive vs Cheap router

[shoutingsteve]

I am planning on buying a router to replace my current one (it has started to randomly fail)  but want to make sure that the my wired devices will be able to fully use the 1000M they are cable of.  I am only looking at routers with 10/100/1000M LAN ports, but will some of them perform better than others or does a higher price tag only improve performance of wireless transmission speeds?

My ultimate goal is to get a router with wireless strong enough to get my through for a few months in my small apartment until I close on my house where I will do a wifi mesh (which will be wired to the router, another reason I care so much about the LAN ports).

 

I currently have a NAS box that is very frequently accessed by two laptops and a desktop, so this isn't just a "I want it to work fully for the sake of working fully" scenario.

[homeap5]

LAN should works fine, but gigabit WAN may be not really gigabyte. I have years ago router with gigabit WAN/LAN, but maximum WAN speed I can get was under 200 Mbits. Now is much better, even cheap models handle good speeds to 700 Mbits. But... If you have really good internet connection speed - buy good router with fast processor and possibility to handle lot of connections at the same time. If you want to have fast LAN - buy good switch that can handle few gigabytes total with 1 gigabits connectors.

[dj_ripcord]

If the router has gigabit ports, then its likely it can handle the throughput of at least 1Gbps. Yes, what you're usually paying for is the wireless capabilities, but honestly the wifi router world is really saturated with BS and brand name marketing to make you think you're getting something good. I don't think there's really much of a performance difference between a Linksys $80 Wi-Fi Router and a $300  NETGEAR SUPER SPEED GAMING HIGH POWERED WIFI ROUTER WITH SUPERCHARGED OVERDRIVE AND TURBO ETHERNET PACKET MANIPULATION!

 

I think it's a lot of BS. If you want WIFI everywhere, use seperate access points or a mesh like you said before.

 

[homeap5]

@dj_ripcord:There is performance difference. Cheap router can freeze if too many connections are established, or just slow down if more than one computer uses lan port. There is reason that expansive routers cost more than cheap ones. Not only because of WiFi.

 

@shoutingsteve: choose your router wisely, like computer. Think what do you want to do on it etc. For example - Linksys and most of cheap Cisco (the same company in fact) don't let you Wake on Lan from outside, but they're solid in everyday work and you probably forgot about they even exist. Some other brands needs telnet to ARP binding and that settings will be dropped while restart (or power loss) - Netgears for example. Some of them are overrated with lot of functionality that works bad or even worse and lot of bugs will never fixed, even if there is lot of firmware udpdates (Asus for example). TP-Links have great built-in ARP binding option, but cheap models have only 16 entries in port-forwarding, and wifi range is not as good as in Asus or Netgear in similar price range.

 

[Jay Deah]

as above. usually the switching side of it will be basically the same as this is easy peasy for the switch engine, what makes all the difference is the routing part.

 

so PC1 connected via cable to PC2 will likely get full speed all day long on any cheap crap.

 

when it comes to Wifi, multiple users, good features, fast WAN etc. this is where the differences really come into play

[LinusOnLine]

On 3/12/2019 at 4:08 PM, dj_ripcord said:

If the router has gigabit ports, then its likely it can handle the throughput of at least 1Gbps.

That is simply not true. Very few routers for consumers can actually handle a throughput of 1Gbps.

[LinusOnLine]

Just check this list of tested routers.

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/old-tools/charts/router/bar/74-wan-to-lan

[mynameisjuan]

4 hours ago, LinusOnLine said:

That is simply not true. Very few routers for consumers can actually handle a throughput of 1Gbps.

Yes and no. 

 

Most consumer routers cannot handle a gig, most seem to cap around 400-500mbps. This is because of the firewall and CPU shitting the bed at full load. Turn off the firewall and most can suddenly hit a gig or close to it. 

 

Shitty CPU in consumer devices just cant handle the 5-10 simple rules to keep up with a gig. 

[LinusOnLine]

My Linksys wrt3200acm caps at 950 while the Linksys EA6500 I had before capped at 500  The WRT has a good processor and tons of RAM the 6500 did not