Timeline for Netgear R6080 AC1000 Router throttling internet speeds to 100Mbps
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 15, 2021 at 13:26 | audit | First posts | |||
| Jan 15, 2021 at 15:03 | |||||
| Jan 7, 2021 at 9:51 | comment | added | TooTea | @Spiff And that's mostly because nowadays what sells a device is the ACamillion number. Most people don't even spend a second thinking about the wired ports. With the prices and profit margins on these devices, saving 50 cents on the wired section is a significant profit boost with limited impact on sales. (It's similar to all the "AC1300" devices that have just one RF frontend, so they're physically incapable of running on both bands at the same time, but that doesn't stop the manufacturer from slapping a big number on the box.) | |
| Jan 6, 2021 at 19:45 | comment | added | Peter Cordes | @user: Still, good detective work, that's better than nothing. And 1/2 W total on the cable modem + router ends does sound plausible to me; GigE requires significantly more signal processing (to subtract what your sending because it uses all 4 pairs in both directions at once). 100M just uses 1 pair for each direction, with a simpler encoding scheme. | |
| Jan 6, 2021 at 19:43 | comment | added | Peter Cordes | @user: I'd be wary of extrapolating from a device with a 48-port switching fabric. For fully non-blocking (or whatever you call enough aggregate bandwidth to max out all 48 ports at port full duplex), some of the transistor counts scale with number of ports squared. At least I think so. So the switching fabric might be a significant fraction of that total power, not just the transceivers. And that total power might be worst-case, with 802.3az energy efficient ethernet having to use max power for long/noisy links on every port. | |
| Jan 6, 2021 at 19:33 | comment | added | user | @PeterCordes If we compare two dedicated switches, the TL-SG1048 and the TL-SF1048 (both 48 port switches from the same manufacturer), the gigabit switch costs double the 100 megabit one and it also uses (max power from the specifications) 3x the power per port. If your only Ethernet connection will be limited by the WAN speed, you might be able to save half a watt or so by going with a 100 Mbit router instead of gigabit. On something that presumably runs 24/7, you could be saving 12 Watt-hours every day by using a switch that has 100 Mbit Ethernet. That's over 4 kWh per year. | |
| Jan 6, 2021 at 19:12 | comment | added | Peter Cordes | @user: Cost maybe, but power seems like an unlikely concern for device that doesn't run on batteries. Given modern chips with energy-efficient-ethernet that reduces power for short cables, it's probably well under a watt difference. Also, if plugged into a slow cable-modem that itself only does 100M ethernet, it will only run the PHY at that speed. (Although these days a 1G cable modem would be expected even if the specific install had low bandwidth). But that's all the upstream port. The internal switch being only 100M is total nonsense, making them slower than the wifi! | |
| Jan 6, 2021 at 16:16 | comment | added | user | @Spiff If you live in the boonies like me and can't get anything close to 100 mbit Internet, then 10/100 Ethernet ports can potentially be a cost/electricity save. The AC helps when laptops on the WiFi want to communicate to each other with decent speeds. | |
| Jan 6, 2021 at 2:20 | vote | accept | Joel Hoelting | ||
| Jan 6, 2021 at 1:08 | comment | added | Spiff | @JoelHoelting Yes. Any AC-capable router with only 10/100 Ethernet ports is ripoff design. Unfortunately, all the major home network equipment vendors have at least one model like this. | |
| Jan 6, 2021 at 0:50 | comment | added | Joel Hoelting | I still don't understand why the limitation would be between the "drinking straw" between the modem and router. If the router is connecting at 700Mbps to my wireless clients but the max speed between modem and router is 100Mbps, then Netgear just built the router knowing it would have these limitations? | |
| Jan 6, 2021 at 0:43 | comment | added | davidgo | +1 - my initial reaction was that with those WiFi specs surely the router is gigabit capable but no - netgear.com/home/wifi/routers/r6080 | |
| Jan 6, 2021 at 0:24 | history | answered | Spiff | CC BY-SA 4.0 |