Help in understanding link speed vs internet speed.

Davanius

Davanius

Davanius

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Can anyone help me to understand the difference please?

I have just bought a Netgear router. It's feeding wifi to many devices but the ones in question are two computers with 5Ghz adapters. The router is placed in a black glassed open unit under a tv.

The first pc is located downstairs and the adapter properties are stating 520mbps link speed on average. The second pc is located upstairs with a 866mbps reading. I have a 200mbps line and have tested the speed online which results in both computers getting the full 200mbps.

So am I to ignore the link speed reading as long as I am getting the full internet speed?

Does the link speed have any correlation to the internet speed so in other words, as long as I am getting more than a 200mbps link speed then it should be fine?

Should I also move the router away from the tv unit and place it so that the antennas have nothing over them?

Thank you in advance.:)
 
Your link speed is how fast your computers are talking to the router.
Your internet speed is fairly obviously exactly that.

Your link speed would be useful if you were transferring between the 2 computers as then you will get a speed higher than the internet speed (your LAN speed).
 
Thanks for the reply. So I am not to worry about the numbers then as it's high enough and the router can stay where it is.

Cheers. ;)
 
Imagine you have a huge toilet bowl but narrow plumbing. You can only get rid of last nights curry as fast as the plumbing allows. In this instance, the plumbing is your internet connection.
 
Caged said:
Imagine you have a huge toilet bowl but narrow plumbing. You can only get rid of last nights curry as fast as the plumbing allows. In this instance, the plumbing is your internet connection.
Click to expand...

So the sewers is the internet, which is full of... well you know. I like this analogy :p.
 
The internet is basically a huge grouping of individual local networks. What you're referring to as "internet speed" is just the connection speed from your ISP's backbone network to your router (i.e. download speed). It's often, but not always, the bottleneck between your device and a server on the internet, hence you will never get internet download speeds faster than that.

The "link speed" is just the connection speed between your device and your router, on your local network. File transfers or media streaming inside your home will use these speeds since they don't need to connect out to the internet.
 
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