Can routers cause bandwidth bottleneck?

[voicenosound]

Hi, I have a 2Mb Broadband connection and a Linksys BEFSR41 V3 router. Earlier, I was testing my connection and i noticed that when my PC was plugged directly into the Broadband modem I was getting speeds of around 1.9 - 2 Mb whereas when my PC was plugged into the router it could only achieve a maximum speed of 1Mb. (Or at least so it said on the test) To test my connection i used: www.speedtest.net/ and tested with the same server each time.

So, is my router causing a bottleneck between my Broadband modem and my PC or is the slowdown in my internet speed the cause of something else?

And if the router is the cause of the problem, what would be a good router to replace it with?

EDIT: I've had this router for around 4 years (i think) now.



Thanks,
Voice.

 

[JTY]

A router can cause a bottleneck, however it shouldn't cause one at such a low speed. What kind of connection is it? My guess would be, the router is causing an MTU mismatch.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Agrees with above....

To answer you question...yes routers can be a bottleneck..but on your 2 meg connection..even the antiquated befsr series from Linksys isn't the bottleneck..that particular version should be good for at least 7-9 megs of throughput.

I'd make sure you have recent firmware on it, that the routers MTU is set correctly (I prefer to manually set it, instead of trusting "auto")...1500 for cable, bridged DSL, various T's, 1492 for PPPoE DSL.

Make sure that your current DSL modem isn't already running as a router doing NAT.

 

[TechLarry]

I would tend to agree. 2MB should not be tough on most routers.

However, that IS a pretty old router.

Maybe the OP is using Bittorrent. With BT, there is more to consider than just the thru-put. There's also the concurrent connections.

If I recall, the concurrent connections capabilities of those older routers is very low. I think you are lucky to get around 255 CC's out of them.

CC's didn't really become a big issue until BT came about, and that's only been in the last 2 years or so if I recall correctly.

If you are a heavy BT user, you need to research carefully and consider the maximum CC's the device can handle.

Wan-To-Lan thru-put is indeed becomming an issue for some as well these days. Many new routers sold today max out at around 25-30MB/Sec or lower. Even higher-end routers like some Cisco's can't exceed that. For someone with a 2MB, 5MB or maybe even 10MB net connection, that's ok (again, you have to also take CC's into mind).

However when I upgraded to 15MBit Cable the first thing I had to do was replace my router with one that could handle the wan-to-lan thru-put completely. I went with a DLink DGL-4300, which handles in excess of 90MB/Sec and 1000 CC's and it's worked out well for me.

Depending on the site and time of day, my connection will actually squirt 25-27MB/Sec of data, and my old router just killed the speed. I never got over 12 MB/Sec with it. I believe that was a Linksys WRT54GS Rev 1 (the older good one).

A router can cause a bottleneck, however it shouldn't cause one at such a low speed. What kind of connection is it? My guess would be, the router is causing an MTU mismatch.