Can my router impact my internet speed?

[Omikor]

Hi there! So I have this router that came in from my network provider company and I was just wondering if it impacts my network performance. 

[Dujith]

Short answer: Yes

Longer answer, anything in your network can or will impact your network performance.

For home use the router/modem from your ISP should be sufficient and at least give the speeds advertised with a wired connection.

 

[SnowyMus]

23 minutes ago, Omikor said:

Hi there! So I have this router that came in from my network provider company and I was just wondering if it impacts my network performance. 

If you mean your connection between your home network and the Internet, your router forwards packets between your home network and the Internet. Since everything goes through this one router, then that one router can impact your connection speed if it's too slow.

 

If you mean your connection between devices on your home network, that's also possible. Many home routers also operate as network switches, and if your devices are all connected through this one device, then this device can technically bottleneck or even prevent connections between devices. Some managed switches can actually do this intentionally if configured to do so.

[Alex Atkin UK]

10 hours ago, Kavawuvi said:

If you mean your connection between your home network and the Internet, your router forwards packets between your home network and the Internet. Since everything goes through this one router, then that one router can impact your connection speed if it's too slow.

 

If you mean your connection between devices on your home network, that's also possible. Many home routers also operate as network switches, and if your devices are all connected through this one device, then this device can technically bottleneck or even prevent connections between devices. Some managed switches can actually do this intentionally if configured to do so.

Its very very unlikely the switch in your router will impact the LAN at all though, it should be able to handle every port going flat-out.

The problem was mostly on older routers where they didn't always include a switch so would do it in software.  In that case the routers CPU could overload, but I'd be very surprised to find any modern switch doing that.

 

The exception are the top-end users that have a 2.5Gbit port.  Those ARE software bridged to the switch, but then they also have very beefy CPUs.

But generally, if your router has four LAN ports or more that all are the same speed, it will be a hardware switch.  If it has less, it might be software and then you definitely want a real switch connecting to the router and connecting all your devices to that instead of the router directly, at least if you ever want the devices to talk to each other.  If you are just using the Internet, its generally a none-issue as all traffic to the Internet is software routed anyway.

WiFi to LAN traffic is also done using software bridging, which is why some routers claim to be 802.11ac but cannot reach the peak speeds as the CPU overloads.

[SnowyMus]

On 7/22/2019 at 2:20 PM, Alex Atkin UK said:

But generally, if your router has four LAN ports or more that all are the same speed, it will be a hardware switch.  If it has less, it might be software and then you definitely want a real switch connecting to the router and connecting all your devices to that instead of the router directly, at least if you ever want the devices to talk to each other.  If you are just using the Internet, its generally a none-issue as all traffic to the Internet is software routed anyway.

Yes.

 

The question was if a router could impact Internet speeds (I think, earlier, it was whether or not it could impact a network connection and it got edited?), and network switches also introduce a measurable amount of delay (a few microseconds?), so there is technically an impact even if the impact is completely negligible. Maybe this is just being pedantic, but you never know!

[Alex Atkin UK]

11 minutes ago, Kavawuvi said:

Yes.

 

The question was if a router could impact Internet speeds (I think, earlier, it was whether or not it could impact a network connection and it got edited?), and network switches also introduce a measurable amount of delay (a few microseconds?), so there is technically an impact even if the impact is completely negligible. Maybe this is just being pedantic, but you never know!

More like nanoseconds actually, but as the alternative is just connecting two PCs together, not that useful in most cases.

There is also likely nanosecond differences in the switching depending on how fast the switch is.

Also when connected at 10Gbit switching is faster than 1Gbit, which in turn is faster than 100Mbit.

[moazzem_IT]

On 7/22/2019 at 2:30 PM, Omikor said:

Hi there! So I have this router that came in from my network provider company and I was just wondering if it impacts my network performance. 

The routers provided by ISP are not good. You have to use a separate good brand wifi router for getting better signal.