Router Speed vs ISP Speed?

Question

Hello,
I was looking at wireless routers and I don't fully understand the relations and benefits between a router and ISP.
I notice a lot of N routers have a bandwidth of 300mbps now with Cox if you get their most premium internet connection your running on 54mbps MAX that's with powerboost. So isn't impossible to utilize the 300mbps when considering WAN speeds because it seems I'm missing information somewhere. Is the only benefit of having a N router over a G router is LAN speeds.
Thanks for any help (:

Answer 1

If you transfer a lot of files from one computer to another or stream high def movies that are on one computer to another computer.....you'll want the fastest speeds you can get.



If you don't do that and only care about downloading from the internet those speeds won't matter at all to you.



The benefit of an N router goes way beyond faster local network speeds though, often they avoid a lot of interference that plague many G routers. You do need an N router capable of operating in 5.8ghz for this, however. Not all N routers do, some operate in the crowded 2.4ghz.



If your confused too bad, im too lazy to explain the rest.



Oh yea your ISP speed isn't 54Mbps. You're just looking at the speed of your wireless router. No ISP sells speeds at 54. If they did they would sell it as 50 or 55, not 54. 54Mbps is the maximum speed a G router can achieve, however, so that is what you are confused with.

Answer 2

Router Speed Vs Internet Speed

Answer 3

You are partly correct.



The speed of the LAN side, that is the speed among all pcs on the LAN are limited to the speed of the router's LAN side switch and any other network switch. This is not an internet connection issue or matter.



Let's say you have 3 pcs and one large network attached storage on your LAN. Let's say that you have a network switch rated at 1 Gbps (1,000 Mbps) and the network storage is rated at 1 Gbps. Let's say that your pcs have older 100 Mbps network interface ports. Under this case, all 3 pcs could be uploading or downloading files to the network attached storage at 100 Mbps since the network switch and the network attached storage can run at 1 Gbps. Note that the network switch and the network attached storage are not used at their full speed (100 Mbps per pc x 3 pcs = 300 Mbps used when switch and storage can run at 1000 Mbps)



If you replace one pc with one that has a 1 Gbps network interface, and keep the other 2 which run a 100 Mbps, things change a bit. Now if all 3 run simultaneously; the two slower pcs will transfer at 100 Mbps and the 1000 Mbps will consume the rest of the capacity or about 700 Mbps.



Note all of the above is on the LAN side only; it assumes no internet traffic; in fact the above considers no Internet traffic.



Remember that in many non-home networks the LAN transfers a whole lot more data within the LAN than it transfers across the Internet.



Now to your question and issue:



1. You always want the LAN speed faster than the Internet speed; there are many cases where there is traffic within the LAN that needs to be addressed.



2. You do not want the pc to router speed to be a bottleneck or speed limiter when compared to Internet speed.



3. If your ISP max speed is 54 Mbps and you have one pc accessing internet, then the max speed you will see is 54 Mbps and the LAN 300 Mbps max speed would not be reached by internet traffic. However, you could consume 54 Mbps with internet and simultaneously share a file on the LAN at 300 - 54 Mbps = 246 Mbps in principal.



4. A wireless G at max 54 Mbps would not be able to deliver as illustrated in # 3 above because it is maxed at 54 Mbps, the ISP max speed.





Keep in mind that the LAN speed should always be faster than the Internet speed.



I hope this has helped.

Answer 4

I have found the "Router Speed vs ISP Speed?" response from five years ago helpful. However, I need additional information to understand what in the wireless router will likely make the speed difference experienced between a hard wire connection to the cable modem (Arris surfboard 6183 - speed test 80) vs hardwire to the wirelesss router (Linksys ea4500 first or second generation) and then hardwire to the cable modem (speed test 29). Also, what spec to help review in the manual.

Thank you for your assistance.

Answer 5

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For number 1: No it doesn't. It will always depend on your internet service provider. For number 2: The distance stipulated in each of the router is always true in an open area. But in the case for the wall issue, it will really be hard to find a definite answer since each persons home is built differently and there may be other devices in their household that causes signal interference. For number 3: You will lose connection gradually.

Answer 6

300mbps is wifi connection speed where as 54mbps is wan link