How much does router performance affect LAN speeds

[jkirkcaldy]

So I was watching a film last night on my Plex media server, and I had a couple of stumbles in playback. Now I know what was the probable cause of the issues (it being streamed over wifi rather than plugged in via an ethernet cable - a problem which will be sorted by the weekend.)

 

It got me thinking, how much - if at all - does the router affect LAN performance. I know that it could have an impact on an WAN connection, being the gateway to the internet and all but how much can it affect the performance of the LAN connections of the various devices in the internal network.

 

I'm basically using the router as a modem and a dhcp server atm, all wifi goes through a Ubiquiti unifi AC LR and Lite access point or is plugged into ethernet. But I am wondering if it is worth replacing it with something with a little more power or if it has such a little impact on performance that it really doesn't make a difference. 

 

Alternatively I could just use my Windows Server 2012r2 as a DHCP server and just have the router literally being a modem only?

 

Any thoughts?

 

 

[deadaccount69]

Ethernet wise, your router will never be the bottleneck to local transfers. The only difference you will see between routers(or more specifically, access points) is in wifi range/speed. Your router is more than capable of switching the packets locally without problems.

[jkirkcaldy]

I thought as much but couldn't find anything online to suggest otherwise. 

 

Thanks for confirming

[SCHISCHKA]

You said it is also a modem. Modems sometimes only have 100M speed LANs.  The actual hardware requirements of ram and CPU for LAN is minimal.

[jkirkcaldy]

Yeah the ethernet ports on the router are only 100m. But I only have one port used on the router going into a switch where everything is gigabit speeds. Which shouldn't affect the LAN speeds as long as the rest of the network is gigabit right?

 

 

[deadaccount69]

Just now, jkirkcaldy said:

Yeah the ethernet ports on the router are only 100m. But I only have one port used on the router going into a switch where everything is gigabit speeds. Which shouldn't affect the LAN speeds as long as the rest of the network is gigabit right?

 

 

Yeah the network speeds shouldn't be affected.