What does The Bandwidth on the router Actually Mean/Do

[Keithngan162]

Im confused as to how the bandwidth on the router differs from the bandwidth that comes from the ISP. All I know is that The bandwidth from the ISP is the maximum speeds that you can achieve.

 

[USAFRet]

Im confused as to how the bandwidth on the router differs from the bandwidth that comes from the ISP. All I know is that The bandwidth from the ISP is the maximum speeds that you can achieve.

The router bandwidth you're looking at is the theoretical WiFi performance. What your PC can talk to the router, and maybe other systems on your LAN, at.
The ISP bandwidth is what comes into your house.

If you had a Ferrari (router) capable of 180mph, and a speed limit of 35mph (ISP speed)....talking to the outside world will only be at 35mph.
No matter what your PC and router can (theoretically) do when talking to each other.

More complex than that, but that the basics.

 

[feelinfroggy777]

The bandwidth on the router is what the router is actually capable of. So if the router is 100mps bandwidth and you have 300mps from your ISP, then you will only get 100mps. Whereas if you have a 300mps router and your ISP is only 100mps, then your top speed will only be 100mps.

The higher the bandwidth on your router the better, but it really only matters in relation to your ISP speed.

 

[Keithngan162]

does the router bandwidth have anything to do with connection stability when several devices are connected?

 

[derekullo]

does the router bandwidth have anything to do with connection stability when several devices are connected?

Technically yes.

This is called the "backplane bandwidth".

https://www.google.com/search?q=backplane+bandwidth

But for 99% of consumer routers the backplane bandwidth is high enough for normal data usage.

If you were to use more backplane bandwidth than available you may add latency to packets.

For instance if you had an 8 port switch and each port had a computer with a solid state drive and you started copying a 4 gigabyte movie from each one to every other one, creating about 98 gigabits (7 gigabits x 7 x 2) of traffic (if i did the math correctly), you would most likely exceed the backplane bandwidth of a consumer router/switch.

But this is an extreme situation that most people will not encounter unless they are explicitly trying to test the router/switch's limits.

In a more realistic scenario of 3 computers on a wired connection looking at youtube/netflix and 3 computers on wireless doing youtube and facebook you shouldn't see a slowdown due to backplane bandwidth, most likely from your maximum download rate from your ISP.