Can I Use Gigabit Routers to Speed Up My Network, Under the 100M Fiber broadband?

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Some friends reported that the internet speed at home is not good, can it be solved by replacing the router? With 100M optical fiber broadband, can I change the gigabit router to increase the network speed?

In fact, when you are using 100M broadband, changing to a gigabit router can not increase the speed of the wired network, but it can increase the speed of the wireless network. Whether the network speed can be improved depends on whether the router is the bottleneck of the network speed.

At present, the main broadband of our family is fiber to the home, and the main networking method is to connect the optical modem to the router. The router is the core of the entire network to build the internal LAN within the family. But in fact, it can be said that there is a network inside the home, which is just a unified export, which is a wired network and a wireless network.

fiber

From the analysis of the wired network speed, only replacing the wireless router cannot effectively increase the wired network speed. In terms of wired network configuration, there are actually four main bottlenecks:

They are the WAN port bandwidth of the optical modem, the LAN port of the optical modem, and the WAN/LAN port of the router itself and the router. It may also lie in the computer’s network card.

Various supported speeds of the wired network:

  • Optical modem’s export bandwidth limit (operator design is 100M)
  • The physical port limit of the optical modem (155MWAN port) 100M LAN port (the actual transmission speed is about 90Mbps)
  • The WAN/LAN port of the 100M router (the transmission speed of the 100M network card is about 90Mbps)
  • Computer’s 100M network card (transmission speed is about 90Mbps)

It can be seen that the bottleneck of the optical modem LAN under the 100M broadband, the 100M router LAN/WAN, and the computer network card are all around 90Mbps. In other words, the transmission upper limit of the 100M network is about 90Mbps, which cannot be solved by simply replacing a gigabit router. The network speed bottleneck limit of optical modem and computer. Therefore, replacing the gigabit router is not necessary for the wired network, and it will not have the effect of increasing the network speed.

Changing the gigabit wireless router can increase the transmission speed of the home wireless network. For users who mainly use mobile phones to access the Internet, it is recommended to replace the gigabit wireless router.

router

The conditions of each device of the wireless network under 100M broadband are as follows:

  • 100M optical modem: WAN port transmits 155M, but the operator limits it to 100M, LAN port 100M, but the performance determines the transmission speed is about 90Mbps. The physical transmission bottleneck of the optical modem is around 90Mbps.
  • Gigabit router: WAN/LAN Gigabit, the transmission speed bottleneck is about 900Mbps. Wireless support 802.11ac protocol, dual-channel wifi transmission supports 867Mbps.
  • Mobile phones under gigabit routers: mobile phones support 802.11ac protocol and can support 433.3Mbps on 5G wifi networks (mobile phones have only single-channel wifi);

On the whole, the speed bottleneck of the mobile phone on the Gigabit router and the 100M optical modem is the optical modem itself, and the maximum download speed is about 90Mbps.

  • 100M router: WAN/LAN port supports 100M, the transmission speed bottleneck is around 90Mbps, wireless only supports 802.11g/n, and 2.4G WiFi supports a transmission speed of 144.4Mbps under dual wifi.
  • The mobile phone under the 100M router: can only start the 802.11g/n protocol, and the single-channel wifi antenna reception under 2.4G wifi can only reach 72.2Mbps transmission beep.

The speed transmission bottleneck of the overall mobile phone on the 100M router plus the 100M optical modem is the mobile phone, and the maximum download speed can only reach 72.2Mbps.

In comparison, the mobile phone download speed of the 100M router is not as good as the maximum download speed of the mobile phone on the gigabit router, and replacing the gigabit wireless router can improve the speed of the wireless network.

network

Summary

All in all, replacing the gigabit router under 100M broadband cannot increase the speed of the wired network, but can increase the download speed of the wireless network. If you are mainly using a computer to access the Internet, you do not need to replace the gigabit router. If you mainly use a mobile phone to access the Internet, it is recommended to replace a gigabit dual-band wireless router.

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