Modem Speed Vs. Router Speed

[Manboob5000]

Hi,

 

So I'm in the market for a new router and modem and was hoping to get some clarification on a detail that's a little fuzzy to me.  When looking at routers, you can find speeds from 56kbps up 1000+mbps but with modems it seems the dl speed caps at 340mbps and upload speed caps at 140mbps (at least the ones I'm looking at).  Looking at this, to me it would seem that the modems would bottleneck the routers connectivity and it really isn't worth buying a router with much more speed than the modem.  Could someone clear this up for me?  And for the sake of argument, let's exclude any ideas of device to device usage over the router.  My main concern is device to internet service.  

 

For a reference, it will be used for casual gaming, video streaming(netflix, youtube, hbogo), and photo sharing.  

 

Here are the devices I'm looking at possibly purchasing;

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704234

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16825120004

 

(Sorry Linus, I know you aren't a newegg guy)

 

Thanks.

[ZetZet]

Routers can be used for networks faster than the modem you are buying to use it with?

You can have that router with gigabit.

[Liam-McShane]

The modem would be a bottleneck if your internet was as fast as it's max speeds, which is highly unlikely. The routers speeds are wireless/wired speeds and will only affect you lan (local). You can pair a slower modem with a faster router no problem.

[Darren]

Your modem is essentially bridging the cable/DSL connection to ethernet. The speed of the modem is irrelevant, since it will peak at the speed if your connection. 340Mbps will be the peak of the current DOCSIS standard or something (don't quote me, not familiar, never had cable).

 

Your router will only forward traffic to the modem when it needs to, i.e. to the internet and back. Any internal traffic won't hit it, so the modem is not a bottleneck.

[DerBernd]

Your modem is essentially bridging the cable/DSL connection to ethernet. The speed of the modem is irrelevant, since it will peak at the speed if your connection. 340Mbps will be the peak of the current DOCSIS standard or something (don't quote me, not familiar, never had cable).

 

The standard thing sounds belivable. I would make my choice depenend on the amount of options you can customize in the modem (I use the terms modem and router here synonymously since I am only talking about the internal modem of the router). Do not sacrifice better software features for two more ethernet ports since you can always add a Gigabit switch behind your modem and call it a day.

Not having the ability to use something like dyndns or some interesting traffic statistic tools and accessible logging is really a pain. Not having such stuff forced me to set up a remote backup in a way I do not like (funneling all the traffic over Synologys server). Other hardware features can be added with additional devices which sounds worse than it is since the location where the glorious internet cable emerges from the wall is not nessecarily the best place to position your wifi access point. I had to deal with a dsl outlet that was in a cupboard in a storage room, wifi signal was really really bad, I can imagine that your cable outlet is somewhere not very central.

The USB ports on the routers are in my experience not very fast and you often fare better with an external hard drive enclosure that has an ethernet port and a printer with an internal print server works better. Something like a WD Mybook live works well as a network storage and you can get a decent printer with an internal print server and ethernet port or even wireless (although I prefer ethernet because of speed and lack of connectivity issues).

tl;dr: get the one with the best and most featurerich web interface, hardware stuff can be added with other devices.

 

What kind of non-computer devices have you running in your home network?