On February 25, 2014 at 13:34, bcf1963 said...
Another thing to keep in mind is that often users will want to transfer files between computers, and will also do things like attached DVR's and other things which will consume network bandwidth. As you start adding these other devices, you can easily get to the point where having a local switch of 100Mbps with a single uplink to the router would be a problem. A single streaming 1080p assuming H.264 is 5Mbps, and H.264 requires quite a bit of compute power for decompression. So assume several of these streams, along with a houseful of users serving webpages on mobile devices, along with a file transfer, and the overhead of all the above, and 100Mbps is getting close to full, if not filled.
It should be noted that local traffic will not traverse the router unless you have two switches attached to the router. If all local downstream devices are on the same switch or south of an aggregation switch, the local traffic will never hit the router (this is not the case if you are using VLANs, but that is not an issue in most home network designs). It is generally preferable to have a single WAN egress from the LAN for this reason.
While there is no issue specifying a gigabit router, most consumer Internet falls below the 100Mb threshold. Even if the router has gig switch ports, you still are limited by the egress bandwidth. In that case, the routers ability to buffer and perform QoS/CoS is more important than pure switch port speed.
