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Forum Discussion
No parallel download due to poor router choice?
For my work I use vim, which is a text editor that supports plugins. One of the plugins is a "master" plugin that manages all plugins, i.e. downloads them.
There are several plugin managers like "packer", "vundle", "vim-plug" and all of them have the same issue.
The issue is that there is no parallel download when using a certain router. So instead of taking about 1 second to download all of them it takes about 20 seconds.
I did some digging on the Internet and haven't found anyone that had this issue. I decided to verify it on Windows, and on a different Linux distro and it all resulted in the same slow update.
If I disconnect the router, and plug in the cable directly to my PC there is no issue with fast downloads.
Is there a setting that a router has that could cause this? I've connected an older router temporarily that doesn't have that issue.
- Modem: ARRIS TG3442
- Bad, newer router: NETGEAR R6120
- Good, older router: TP-Link WR841N
- all have default settings, and the latest firmware
- the PC is connected to the router
- I don't remember exactly but I think that Wi-Fi doesn't have that issue, it's only the wired connection that doesn't allow for parallel downloads
- I use a cat 6 UTP patch cord
- motherboard: B450-A PRO MAX
4 Replies
Retired_Member wrote:
- Bad, newer router: NETGEAR R6120
Strange that you should have the R6120 as a "newer router". It may be just a few years old, from 2019, but it it at least a decade behind the times in its network technology. It is shameful that Netgear still sells this relic.
According to Netgear's manual for the R6120, not always the most reliable source of information, the LAN and WAN ports support only 10BASE-T or 100BASE-TX. That makes it slower than many newer internet services and most modern network hardware. This may not matter to you, but be warned that it will hobble you if you ever sign up for faster Internet, anything faster than 100 Mbps is a waste of your money.
It also slows down whatever is going on in your local network. Newer devices support at least 1000BASE-TX. That includes your modem, which can feed your router at 1000 Mbps. Neither of your routers can take that traffic.No surprise, then, that things are slow on your network. It looks like the TP-Link WR841N is equally slow.
You don't say how fast your Internet connection is, but your hardware seems to be well behind the curve. If speed is important to you, it might be a good time to get something a bit more up to date.
Since both routers are equally slow then why does the older one update plugins much faster?
My internet speed is 100Mbps anyway, so it doesn’t make a difference.
when I said the router was “newer” I meant it was newer compared to the tp link. I never said I bought it recently either. That is off topic though. The question was why does one router download plugins in parallel which is older but the newer one does not have that function. It doesn’t impair anything else in the network.
Retired_Member wrote:
My internet speed is 100Mbps anyway, so it doesn’t make a difference.
I'm afraid it does. When the router says it can handle 100 Mbps on the $Ethernet connection, that means that if you take account of the usual overhead, it probably maxes out at 90-95 Mbps.
Then there is the fact that some ISPs have a habit of "over-provisioning" their service. They say they will deliver 1000 Mbps, but this often means 110 Mbps, sometimes even higher.
Don't forget, that 100 Mbps has to handle more than one traffic stream. If two things on your network want to talk to each other at 100 Mbps. there just ain't enough bandwidth there.
As your complaint is all about the speed at which things happen, it seems to be a bit perverse to use hardware that is guaranteed to act like a roadblock.
Then again, I can't recall reading anything here from people complaining about "parallel download". That is not a phrase that appears anywhere in the 1200 or so Netgear manuals and documents I have on file.
