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Forum Discussion
RBK853 - 2.5gb to LAN Switch?
Currently have a home network with an older Orbi with only 1Gbps ports in the back. However, I pay for 2Gbps internet service and the whole house is connected to a 2.5Gbps switch. So my wired interest speeds are bottle necked by the router maxing out at around 980Mbps to any ethernet port around the house. I get my full 2Gbps connected directly to the modem.
Was looking at possible upgrade to my router but not seeing many routers with multiple 2.5Gbps ports on the back. However, the RBK853 I'm looking at has a 2.5Gbps port and 4x 1Gbps ports which also supports link aggregation. Not too familiar with the technology, but does that mean I plug the modem into the 2.5Gbps port and the switch to the link aggregated 1Gbps port and get 2.5Gbps to the switch? Or will I still be bottled necked to 1Gbps to the switch?
2 Replies
Link aggregation applies only to the WAN connection. Since the RBR850 WAN port is 2.5GB, that is sufficient to carry the ISP connection by itself. (Back when the 850 series was designed, many ISPs were providing modems with multiple gigabit ports and link aggregation was a popular method to get more capacity. Now that 2.5GB (and even 10GB) Ethernet ports are common on ISP modems, link aggregation has pretty much disappeared.)
On the bright side, Ethernet connected devices can consume a full gigabit of data, leaving another gigabit available to devices connected via WiFi and to satellites. Also, if multiple devices are connected to that 2.5GB switch, they can communicate between themselves at 2.5GB speed while not impacting the rest of the network.
The only way to get more than 1GB to that switch is to have an Ethernet port on the router supporting that speed. Netgear (and every other manufacturer) makes routers with this feature, but they are "top of the line" and thus relatively expensive. (Plus, changing to such a system is certain to be a "fork lift upgrade", meaning that the entire WiFi network has to be replaced.)
For a bit more you could get the RBE773 that has multigig ports on it. Or a renewed RBKE963 that has a 10gig wan port and 1x 2.5gig port on the router and each satellite.
