How 'standard' is 1Gb networking?

Nic_s · January 20, 2022

Right at the start of the video: "You probably haven't had to think to much about what gadget to plug into what port on your home router or network switch... 'Cos they're usually all the same speed. Gigabit on just about everything has been the standard for quite a while now."

Has it? Is it?

In November 2021 I made the mistake of assuming that 1Gb is basically standard and bought the ASUS AC51 as it was on a huge special. However, I did not get to setting it up until after the holidays as I was waiting on a new switch as well. When I finally got it setup I saw the WAN and LAN ports are only 100Mbps. By now I cannot return the router. Now this is my mistake for not scrolling all the way down and expanding the product description on our version of Amazon here in South Africa, Takealot.

Seeing this video got me wondering how many general consumer products is still using 100Mbps... and it seems like quite a bit. I looked on Takealot and then looked up the specs on the manufacture sites and kinda gave up after about 20min... see list at the end of the post.

I'm struggling to understand why 100Mbps is still pretty much everywhere. The manufactures can't mention the incredible wifi speeds enough, but what's the point if it's just going to get choked down to 100Mbps anyway?? Internet speeds are also going up all the time which means 100Mbps is often limiting your internet speeds. I have 200Mbps and so the 100Mbps on this ASUS router makes it kinda useless.

Sure, 100Mbps is still useful as it uses less power and produces less heat and for IoT or mobile devices it should be perfectly fine. Considering modern internet speeds, modern Wifi Speeds, and how cheap gigabit is, I think most of these 100Mbps consumer wifi routers are basically e-waste. Gigabit routers will be perfectly fine for most consumers for quite some time still, but 100Mbps stopped being fine for general networking many years ago.

According to wikipedia... 100Mbps was introduced in 1995 which makes it more than 25 years old. Gigabit was introduced in 1998.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Ethernet

Obviously, the tech savvy people would not be buying 100Mbps devices unless it's a requirement for some reason, but most of the public actually doesn't know any better and will continue to buy these products. I think manufacturers know this and is taking advantage of most people not knowing any better and selling them great wifi that is choked down to 100Mbps.

So, no... you do actually have to think about the network speeds of your devices. Don't make the same mistake I did and make sure what the specs are. If you can't find the specs to confirm the speeds, don't buy it.

Zyxel: (The second link is 1Gb and the price difference between these 2 is less than $10 here in South Africa...)
https://www.zyxel.com/products_services/AC1200-Dual-Band-Wireless-Router-NBG6604/specifications
https://www.zyxel.com/products_services/AC1200-MU-MIMO-Dual-Band-Wireless-Gigabit-Router-NBG6615/specifications

Tenda:
https://www.tendacn.com/product/specification/f3.html
https://www.tendacn.com/product/specification/F9.html
https://www.tendacn.com/product/specification/ac5v3.html
https://www.tendacn.com/product/specification/ac6.html

D-Link:
https://dlinkmea.com/index.php/product/details?det=TU40UzNYSEUrRGtIS09ONXh5bWJKUT09
https://www.d-link.co.za/product/dap-1360/

ASUS:
https://www.asus.com/Networking-IoT-Servers/WiFi-Routers/ASUS-WiFi-Routers/RT-AC1200-V2/techspec/
https://www.asus.com/Networking-IoT-Servers/WiFi-Routers/ASUS-WiFi-Routers/RT-AC51/techspec/

linksys: This only lists "Fast Ethernet" which means 100Mbps...
https://www.linksys.com/us/wireless-routers/traditional-routers/linksys-wifi-router-dual-band-ac1000-wifi-5/p/p-e5350/

xiaomi: This first one is weird... some places list it has Gb LAN and 100Mbps WAN... so who knows...
https://www.mi.com/global/mi-router-4a/specs
https://www.mi.com/global/mi-router-4c/specs

Alex Atkin UK · January 20, 2022

57 minutes ago, Nic_s said:

I'm struggling to understand why 100Mbps is still pretty much everywhere. The manufactures can't mention the incredible wifi speeds enough, but what's the point if it's just going to get choked down to 100Mbps anyway?? Internet speeds are also going up all the time which means 100Mbps is often limiting your internet speeds. I have 200Mbps and so the 100Mbps on this ASUS router makes it kinda useless.

Its quite simple actually, routers with 100Mbit ethernet are intended for broadband much slower than 100Mbit. The SoC itself may not even have a Gigabit NIC and is certainly too slow to run broadband that fast, so they cut costs and only include a 100Mbit switch too, if it even HAS a switch at all. Some of these routers are used by ISPs as simply modems too, if they have Cable or DSL modems inside, its all you need.

There will also be some models designs around developing countries where broadband is much slower and wages are low so it may be a choice between that or nothing at all.

Most "Gigabit" routers can't actually handle Gigabit broadband either, its just you either have 100Mbit ports or 1000Mbit ports, there is no technology in-between so they HAVE to use Gigabit ports on all routers that can handle more than 100Mbit.

As for the WiFi speeds, its absolutely deceptive marketing though "technically" correct, as devices may be able to talk to each other at those speeds - but not to anything on the LAN. Although even that isn't guaranteed as again the CPU power in the router determines how fast it can push WiFi too, not just the broadband side.

Simply put, the consumer router market has been a complete mess since day one but it just got worse when WiFi became a thing. Another marketing bullet point to make the device seem more capable than it really is.

Anghammarad · January 20, 2022

Well 1 gbit Network is "standart" for really quite a while now.

Depending where you live, for example here in germany, if you run basic ADSL or VDSL for your interwebs, 100 Mbit is more than enough. *cough* germany is a 3rd world country in regard of LTE coverage and Interwebs speeds... (Ok a new provider did just put a 1 gbit fiber in my living room, I just have to switch to them and pay 20 bucks more for 1000/200 mbit, but this is not the usual case here... and I live in a ~2 mil city... one of the larger ones here...)

so before that 100 mbit would have been enough for the home network, until you run your own lil "datacenter" (small server for files, media etc) or often transfer hugh files from one machine to another...

I haven't seen any 2.5 gbit switches in the wild... but for a while, when you look at amazon/ebay listings plain 1gbit switches are offered there as 2 gbit switches, because the ports do full duplex, meaning 1 gbit in and 1 gbit out the same time, so that ports get called "2 gbit ports" what a scam...

As for "We need 100 mbit switches!" well I can only think of one case, that is if you still run devices that can only do 10 mbit half duplex... a 10G/1G switch might throw up when you connect such a device, there 100 mbit switches that still know morse code and carriere pidgeon come in handy...

Kilrah · January 20, 2022

There is still quite a bit of 100Mbps but usually only in the really low end stuff.

Lots of people have internet connections <100Mbps and your general user only uses their network for internet, no servers or transfers between devices so they'll never even notice. Easy cost saving by using leftover old chipsets that cost next to nothing.

Alex Atkin UK · January 20, 2022

23 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

There is still quite a bit of 100Mbps but usually only in the really low end stuff.

Lots of people have internet connections <100Mbps and your general user only uses their network for internet, no servers or transfers between devices so they'll never even notice. Easy cost saving by using leftover old chipsets that cost next to nothing.

The plastic casing probably costs more than the contents on those.

To be honest sometimes they are worth picking up off eBay for the PSU and ethernet cable though.