Router Throughput

Hello everyone,

I’m wondering if someone can help me understand a little more about the Surf SOHO. I bought a few of them to test out based on the fact that is says it has a 10/100/1000 WAN and 4 10/100/1000 LAN ports. But when I got the first one all set up, I was only able to get speeds approaching 100Mbps on all my speed tests. When I plugged directly into my modem, I’m getting speeds approaching 500Mbps+. So I checked all my settings in the Surf SOHO and even set the LAN ports to 1000Mbps to make sure. Still only got speeds approaching 100Mbps.

So then I started looking online for reasons, and someone somewhere mentioned that the router throughput was only 100Mbps. It also looks like on a spec sheet somewhere it says the router throughput is 120Mbps.

My question is this, if the WAN port supports 1000Mbps and all the LAN ports support 1000Mbps, why is the router throughput only 100-120Mbps? And is this really true?

Any help here would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Phil

Yes it is.

Its a balancing act of hardware / software cost against capability. Peplink have routers that will do 40Gbps of throughput, but they cost more…

Also LAN port speeds mean that you can transfer files fast between devices connected on the LAN. This isn’t routing its switching - although I haven’t checked to see how much throughput is supported LAN side.

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The port speed (1 Gbps in this case) indicates the maximum transmission speed on the ethernet cable. Wikipedia has a nice write-up.
The port speed does not by itself indicate the capacity of a router to process the communications for particular protocols, for that you check out the throughput specification.

For some routers that can be higher than the port speeds (e.g., Balance multi-WAN routers may provide throughput of more than 1 Gbps using multiple ports), or lower (as in the case of the SOHO).

The SOHO spec. sheet indicates a throughput of up to 120 Mbps, which is consistent with your experience.

Cheers,

Z

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So is the through put limitation of 120Mbps on a per connection basis? Or is that total through put? Basically what I’m kind of wondering is am I wasting my 600Mbps internet connection by having this router? It seems hard to believe Peplink would put a 1000Mbps capable hardware piece in the device, but then limit it with software.

its total throughput

as mentioned above they have devices that can handle much more throughput but you will pay

whether you are wasting your 600mbps connection is your decision

I understand that they have other devices that can handle more throughput. But I’m wondering why they would put hardware in this device that can handle 1000Mbps, but limit the speed in other ways.

As far as the wasting my bandwidth part of my question, it’s not a question of whether I’m choosing to waste it or not. I have the bandwidth. My question was asking if this device was capable of utilizing that amount of bandwidth, which it evidently is not. It looks like you have to jump quite far up the ladder of their devices to be able to utilize any decent amount of bandwidth. It also appears that aside from this device, the others are all non-wifi capable, which means you also need to purchase the AP’s separately. All my clients are very small shops that could benefit greatly from this device if it was capable of handling 1000Mbps on the throughput, but jumping up to their more capable equipment and adding in the AP’s is probably going to put it out of their price range.

Ports come in 10/100/1000 Mbps (and higher) versions, where the transmission speed is set by global standards. These are not to be confused with router throughput - i.e., the ability of a router to handle communications (routing, filtering and firewall stuff, etc.) the speed of which is principally a matter of processing speed (choice of protocols, CPU and software).

Cheers,

Z

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Its not that far to the Balance One - which has embedded wifi.

This fascinates me. The SOHO (Small Office, Home Office) is for very small firms. I get it, if you can buy a 1Gb internet connection then why the hell not, but in practice very few firms ever use more than a few hundred Mbps at any time. I have 250 user call centres and IT services firm deployments that rarely go over 50Mbps in real terms (with the occasional spike to 100Mbps). Don’t get fixated on bandwidth alone.

If your product choice is driven by capex cost alone - I fear you’re missing the whole point of Peplink devices and technologies.

You buy a Peplink device if you care about internet reliability - when you want ‘unbreakable internet’. Or you buy Peplink devices when you need to combine challenging connectivity types because bandwidth and/or connectivity availability is poor. Or you buy Peplink devices because you want to take ownership of your network infrastructure and you can do that with Peplinks easy UI and InControl2 in ways that were impossible before (I have 1st line IT desktop guys here that can deploy large multi-site mesh VPN networks in minutes - try doing that with traditional vendor hardware).

As a MSP you buy / supply / encourage the purchase of Peplink devices because you can do things with them you can’t do with other vendor equipment, and because you can provide insane levels of support and service (using the remote monitoring and management tools) and create brand new opportunities for digital transformation with single and multi cellular routers.

If you want to sell cheap routers buy TP-LINK.
If you want to sell traditional technologies and use traditional support approaches stay with the big brand vendors.

If you want your competitors to be surprised, confused and scared of what you can do; If you want to save your customers time, money, operational expense and challenge them to grow by showing them how they can do new things with unbreakable connectivity anywhere, or if you just want supporting networks to be easy again - Use Peplink.

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I appreciate your comments, and I’m not trying to be controversial or anything. I am brand new to Peplink products. My Surf SOHO is my first experience with them. I also didn’t explain my business or my clients. I typically deal with small franchise businesses that have nothing to do with technology, although like most businesses, technology runs their business in the background. My initial primary interest in Peplink was because I was looking for a way to provide a backup source of internet in case their primary source went down. Even though many of these small business owners don’t realize it or understand it, their business is becoming more and more reliant on the internet and technology. So right now, they don’t require the higher speeds and throughput that I’m asking about. That came up just because I plugged my test Surf SOHO into my home network to play with and was surprised when my 600Mbps was only getting 100Mbps on speed tests.

So anyway, I really do appreciate all the information. All the things you mentioned here are certainly great for me as a service provider, even with the types of clients I serve. But most of them won’t see the value to them (other than the fail over for their internet connection) with all those things. At the same time, I’m also not saying that every product needs to be a perfect fit for every situation. I certainly never meant to imply that Peplink was a horrible product because of… In my specific case, it just may be a hard sell to my typical client. But as I research and learn more about the products, it may be beneficial enough to my end to subsidize the difference in price from a traditional router. You’ve mentioned several things here that I don’t currently utilize, but I can see making my life so much easier (and in turn making my clients businesses so much better), especially as my business grows and I’m managing many more locations. I’ve obviously got a lot to learn with these products and their capabilities. So again, thanks for the information.

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@Dunkster75

Apologies Phil. Realise that as a new user of Peplink products this thread must seem like a hell of an introduction. It all comes from a good place with the best intentions- promise.

I spend a lot time on this forum helping people understand ‘The Peplink Way’, both how the products and technology work and how to use them but also - when I get the chance, insight into Peplink’s approach to product development and their sometimes confusing go to market / commercial strategy.

Your original question above about throughput and port speeds on the SOHO is really valid and has confused loads of others already, sorry if it felt like I was having a go - I wasn’t, I’m just trying to make sure that you and others who read this thread have a chance to think about what is valuable to you and challenge you to work out where you can add value to your customers using Peplink Tech :slight_smile:

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