i have been using a dual lan motherboard for years to go online with xbox360 now with my new board i need a router for xbox360. i dont want to spend alot of money if i will not use the tech. any ideas?

Nope. Unless you're transferring files between your computer and your xbox, the limiting factor will be your internet speed, which should be way less than 100mbps anyways.

Probably not. My take was that the only use for a GigE router on my home network would be to accelerate remote backups, and even then it wouldn't do all that much good unless all hardware and software on the net supported jumbo frames.

If you have several computers and regularly transfer files between them, then yes Gigabit helps a lot. Transferring gigabytes of data on 100Mbps is just too painful.

Xbox 360 only supports 100Mb Lan anyway.

However, for future purposes wouldn't be a bad idea if you have the money.

Other than transferring files, what future purposes might you imagine would need that speed?

Would It be correct to assume that for web surfing you can't tell the difference between 100mb and 1000mb?

Are you saying that you see no need for an Internet connection faster than 100Mbit?

Probably what you want:

PCs -> Gigabit switch -> router -> modem

+1.

nyhcbri, how do you connect to your ISP currently? What does your current LAN look like / consist of?

Around here, 110/5 Mbps is 45eur a month (about $60) and 220/10 is 55eur. And the real speed is actually very close to the published numbers!

I don't think internet speed should be way less than 100Mbps!

Is that 110 Mb down? Wow. N America's "broadband" is a joke compared to most of the developed world. My ISP's fastest DSL is "up to" 6Mb down, and that's $40 / month. The fastest fibre offering is 18Mb, and that's $60/month (but must be bundled with phone or TV, so add $$).

No. I have no opinion. I was hoping someone who has an informed opinion would express it so that I could develop an opinion.

I don't miss speeds over 100mb - but you can't miss what you never had.

The 18MB is just in your area right? Cause I'm pretty sure Verizon FiOS has a 50Mbps down plan.

Verizon hasn't really penetrated the non-wireless market here. It's mainly TWC, ATT and TDS to a much lesser extent. The 18Mb note above is ATT's U-Verse fiber, and that's their fastest offering. Their basic speed is 6Mb. It's almost tragic.

Two friends in the area used to live across the street from each other. We built a point-to-point wireless network out of USB .11g adapters and cooking woks ("WokFi"). We got a reliable 6-10Mb out of it, which was up to 6x faster than either was willing to pay for internet access. This was without a 100% clear line of sight, over about 200 feet.

The issue for me with fast "last mile" links (at least in the US) is that you'll never hit, say 100Mb/s, unless every link in between you and your destination can give you 100Mb/s bandwidth when you want it.

I think the OP's question is being interpreted 2 ways. The question posed was "do I really need a gigabit router?".

The OP may have meant a router with a gigabit WAN port. I don't really see the point of gigE WAN ports ... do any consumer cable/DSL/fibre modems have gigabit ports? And if they do, can they give you better than 100Mb/s on the other side? If so, at what cost? If not, there's no point.

If the OP meant a consumer router with a built-in 4-port gigabit switch on the LAN side, I don't think that's is a good value either. You can get a "green", metal-cased, fanless, 5-year warranty Trendnet 5-port gigabit switch for $15 (after MIR). I own a couple of the 8-port versions and love them. $15 is less than the price premium of a gigabit router over a regular router.

IMO there are more important features to look for in a router. I've come to see DD-WRT support as a necessity lately. I have a WRT-54G, but would buy a $32 (AR) Asus WL-520gU if I had to do it over today. My WRT54G requires the "lite" version of DD-WRT.

So for $47 you have a really powerful DD-WRT/Tomato router with 3 available 100Mb ports, plus 4 available gigabit ports on the switch. For $20 less than the cheapest gig WAN/LAN router listed on Newegg.

for home use 100Mbit is plenty now. I'm still on a <10Mbit cable modem at home. How long will that last though?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS shows 3.0 modems with 4 channels doing >150 Mbit down and >100 Mbit up. 8 channel modems doing >300 Mbit down and >100 Mbit up.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/03/17 ... -Hollywood is the most recent story that got me thinking about docsis 3 modems.

I realize it isn't here yet but I'm looking forward to it.

For now if I was buying new home equipment and I didn't have FIOS happening I'd be happy with non gigabit equipment.

If you do have an insane fast connection or expect to get one in your town in the near future you might want to look at http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/componen ... temid,189/ and read some reviews looking at faster gear for the home market.

There are only 6 routers on that chart that can handle 300Mbit down. There are another 13 that would probably be good enough for 150 MBit down (I'm including the ones down to 125Mbit)

Ack - hurry up and deploy already! I'm a bit cynical about "broadband" in the US. Especially in light of stuff like this from the FCC:

Yes, 110 Megabits per second down, 5 Megabits per second up, via cable. But this is the capital area of Finland. While we have it good here, our country side suffers from monopolies that offer only slow and expensive choices.

Our block of flats has fiber coming from another isp, but alas no ethernet. All new buildings around here include ethernet, which means you can get the same speed even cheaper than what I have with cable.

Should I even mention flat rate mobile internet starting from 10eur a month ($13) for 384kbps down with no data transfer quota?

@lm - Sigh & drool. For a survey of what's available in the US (mainly), browse the "Post You Connection Speed" thread at [H]ardForum. Very few with 100Mb or better down.

Personally, I think you should strive to remove any possible bottleneck, and also you should think about what your future needs will be. Will you get a laptop, for example. Or will you be streaming movies through your x-box? I'd go with a gigabit router that has the latest wireless protocols built in, and that has 4 ports. You can disable the wireless if you want. These devices are pretty cheap now. If one lasts 5 years, even a $150 investment is negligable over the lifetime of the device.

GigE is handy if you move a lot of files around your LAN, or big files, or video stream. If it is only occasional moves of average (<100MB) files then 100 mbps is fine. If the price and features are close however you might as well go with a GigE router for some future proofing.

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The cable company here just started offering 100mbps down (still 1-1.5 up). The price? $160/month!

The local DSL provider is advertising a coming 100 mbps Fibre to the home service but hasn't revealed the price yet. If it is the same price as their 30 mbps ftth offering in NB, I estimate it will be about $200/month.

And there are caps and throttles on those too folks.

As others have noted, the fastest consumer internet connections are considerably less than 100 mbps (except in rare cases) in the USA. Even if you had an internet ISP that provided more than 100 mbps, most websites cannot sustain higher than that rate for a single connection.

If you shop around, you can probably find a 100 mbps router for $15-$20 max. I got one on sale for $10 at Fry's.

Forget about future proofing. A router may not last forever, and it will probably break by the time you need something faster.

If the price difference isn't great future proofing is a good idea. It doesn't have to mean proofing against 5 years down the road. It can mean that if 3 months from now you decide to video stream in the house you won't have to go buy a new router as well.

As for router's breaking, I just replaced a USR8000-2 that I got in 1999. Wouldn't power up anymore. Of course with it's 10 mbps WAN port it wasn't usable on 15mbsp broadband but it made a nice internal router as it had a dialup serial port and parallel print server which I now have to replace.

It also depends on the topology of your network, and how many people are using it. A local 100mb link could be saturated if Media Extender, network backup and games are being used at the same time.

(My first post!)

When OP says:

"i don't want to spend alot of money if i will not use the tech" I tend to take that as a strong hint.

It's not really clear to me whether the OP needs a router (or router/switch) or just a switch. Routers are usually only needed to connect directly to the internet (for DSL or Cable) and are usually supplied by the ISP (almost always 100 mb models in the USA). If one just needs to expand an existing home network already connected to the internet, a switch is all that is needed (unless one needs to add wireless capabilities).

A 100 mb switch can be purchased for $10-$20. Routers are more expensive, and most gigabyte models are at least double or triple that.

Worrying about 5 years down the road for a $10-$20 device is probably not cost effective, since the technology will probably change by then.

This Netgear switch should do nicely (if a switch is all that is needed). Cost is $9.99 after MIR, free shipping (this is price as of today and subject to change). It received outstanding customer reviews.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833122005

I can recommend a Gigabit switch that I have just bought as I needed more ports, for years I have been using a 5-port Netgear GS605, I now have an 8-port D-Link DGS-1008D, it cicks arse.

I used to top out at 45MB/s, I now top out at 110MB/s (that is megaBYTES, not megaBITS), a 700MB movie gets copied to the server in 7-seconds, lots of small files (3-5MB MP3's) still get pushed around at 30-40MB/s.

Your milage may vary, and HDD performance could be a bottleneck.

The switch is fanless and cost ~£45, you will need to use CAT 5e or CAT 6 cabling to all devices that are gigabit capable to get the benefit.


Andy

£45 is about $69 USD. A bit more than the $10 USD (free shipping and no tax in most states) for the 100 mb switch for which I provided a link above.

Very true, although it may be 1/7th the price it has 1/10th of the potential bandwidth.

Only the end user can decide whether the want/need/can afford Gigabit ethernet over slow ethernet.


Andy