Do router speeds matter?

[Grimmjow]

Do router speeds matter? I am talking about the maximum theoretical bandwidth thing like 1200mps

what are acceptable speeds for a 15 , 30 , 100 mbs/s internet?

 

[Senzelian]

They do matter.

 

If you got a 100mbps internet connection, then you would obviously also want at least 100mbps WiFi and 100mbps LAN connections, otherwise, you wouldn't be able to utilize your internet connection to its full extent.

 

If you have a NAS for example, like I do, then 1 Gigabit LAN connections can be beneficial.

Higher WiFi speeds can also be beneficial if you want to access that NAS or any other WiFi-enabled device and need to transport a lot of data to or from them.

[mariushm]

 

The router will take in whatever internet connection you have (15,30,100mbps) and make it available on wired ethernet  connectors and on wireless. On wired connectors, you practically have no losses and same speed as the internet (no latency, no packet losses, no speed drops).

On wireless, you get some latency due to conversion to air and back from air to data inside router, you get some latency if there's lots of other devices competing for "air space" around your router, you may get some speed drops from time to time depending on how far your computer is from the router, if there's walls around, if there's some devices producing noise that affects the transmission.

But in general, you should be able to easily gain those 15 or 30mbps even with a crappy wireless router. 100 mbps may be problematic with some routers, but most higher end routers would manage 100mbps just fine.

 

The maximum theoretical bandwidth, that number you see on routers, like 1200 mbps is basically the SUM of all bandwidth the router can use to talk to devices. For example, a router may be able to use 2.4 ghz frequency to talk to various devices at up to 300 mbps and may be able to use 5 ghz frequency to talk to devices at up to 866 mbps ... so 866 + 300 = 1166 mbps  and they basically round it up to 1200mbps to make the router sell better, to look better on the box.

The maximum speed will depend on what your wireless network card is actually capable of, and how far away you are from the router and other things.

If your wireless card is 2.4 ghz only, then it doesn't matter that your router is capable of "1200mbps", you'll still only get the maximum of your network card and the maximum the router can do on the 2.4 ghz frequency.

So for example, you may have a 2.4 ghz wireless card that can do maximum 150 mbps, your router can do maximum 300 mbps on 2.4 ghz, so even though your router is advertising 1200 mbps, your maximum speed to the router will be 150 mbps  (~ 72 mbps in either direction, because the number represents total incoming and outgoing bandwidth, and you get half of that in either direction)

With 5 ghz, those high speeds may only be achieved with wireless cards that have multiple antennas.. for example, a router that says it can 1200 mbps may be able to achieve a speed of up to 866 mbps to a device, but only if that device has two antennas and is smart enough to send and receive data through both antennas at the same time.

You may have a 5 ghz wireless card that has only one antenna, in which case the router will only be able to connect and talk to your wireless card at half that speed, 433 mbps.

 

[Gikero]

Rated router speeds are aggregates of the frequencies.

5Ghz @ 750Mbps
2.4Ghz @ 450Mbps

---------------------------

1200Mbps rated.

You'll never get that due to limitations of the tech.

Having a higher rated router can help in some situations, but most of the time it comes down to having a properly configured network and the least amount of interference/ SSID overlap. Higher transfer rates can be useful on your local network when transferring peer to peer. Your ISP's download speed can only ever go as fast as they allow.

[Alex Atkin UK]

The speed on routers is merely the combined WiFi "link" speed, it doesn't even mean you can actually achieve anything close to that much speed in the real-world, particularly as most client devices do not have enough antennas to link at full speed.

 

For example, a 1200Mbit router from a single client you'd be lucky to get 600Mbit and probably be pushing the CPU at that point so broadband performance would suffer.

 

Most frustratingly, it has nothing to do with how fast a broadband speed it can handle.  AFAIK no consumer router can reliably handle 1000Mbit, and certainly not when handling WiFi at the same time, which on its own can max out most consumer routers CPU.

 

The speed of the broadband connection the router can handle is closely tied to its maximum real-world WiFi speed, as both depend on the CPU being able to handle the load.   PPPoE based broadband needs a much faster router than a plain DHCP based broadband, for example.