Slow home network? Check the router.
March 27th, 2011 by Christian(or, A geeky interlude from our regular blogging.)
I’m trying to improve my Internet connection speed and home and my home network generally. (That partly explains my last post, too.)
After a series of tests last week, I was astonished to discover that one of the key bottlenecks was my router. I bought a router that says 10/100 Ethernet on the box, meaning it supports both 10Base-T and 100Base-TX. I was assuming that if I connected Fast Ethernet devices to it with an ordinary Category 5 cable I would get 100 Mbit/s of throughput in each direction. But I was getting about 12.
(Cat 5 cable. Image credit: Wikimedia commons.)
The Eureka moment came when I found this chart over at smallnetbuilder.com. My router came in 63rd out of 64 routers tested on total throughput. On WAN to LAN download speed, a key metric, it came in 59th out of 64 routers tested.
Although it said 100 Mbit/s on the box, it actually maxes out at 20 according to these tests. (Like I said, I was getting about 12.)
The offender was a PepLink Balance 30 — actually a load balancing switch. Maybe it is the load balancing that makes it so terrible? I don’t know. At one time I was so desperate for throughput I had multiple ISPs at the same time and I was aggregating them. I have abandoned the idea of load balancing, so there’s no point to it now.
Time to treat myself to an ASUS Black Diamond Dual-Band Gigabit Wireless-N Router. I’m worth it. I deserve it. Tested maximum throughput 1,268 Mbit/s. We should notice a difference between that and 12. Damn it.