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Gigabit speeds measured two ways

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bertilak

Regular Contributor
I have an ASUS router RT-AC86U. It is connected to Centurylink Gigabit service, directly wired to their ONT.

  • If I use the Speedtest built into the router it generally shows download speeds of about 550 Mbps downloading from Centrylink itself.
  • If I connect my laptop to the router by ethernet LAN cable and run Speedtest on the laptop, going to the same Centrylink location, I get speeds of about 940 Mbps.
How can this be? Is the Speedtest application built into the router somehow slower than what I run it on my laptop?

Does the router "pass through" the connection faster than it sees it itself?

And yes, if I plug Centurylink's ONT directly into my laptop I also get speeds of about 940 Mbps.

Curious!
 
2 factors:
  1. It takes CPU cycles from the router to execute the speedtest app within the firmware, meaning fewer cycles for managing traffic.
  2. Traffic originating on the router itself (e.g. router speedtest) doesn’t benefit from the HW acceleration that LAN clients benefit from. And combined with #1, there are even fewer CPU cycles to manage the traffic.
 
I have a 500/100 connection and for a while, my ISP opened the floodgates and assigned more than the allotted 500/100. I never knew the limit but was able to get DL speeds of about 650/700mbps with the router speedtest app (can't recall the UL speeds but were probably 150 or so). So, getting 550mbps seems to me a bit low...
 
2 factors:
  1. It takes CPU cycles from the router to execute the speedtest app within the firmware, meaning fewer cycles for managing traffic.
  2. Traffic originating on the router itself (e.g. router speedtest) doesn’t benefit from the HW acceleration that LAN clients benefit from. And combined with #1, there are even fewer CPU cycles to manage the traffic.
Well, that explains it, especially number 2, I think.
 
I have a 500/100 connection and for a while, my ISP opened the floodgates and assigned more than the allotted 500/100. I never knew the limit but was able to get DL speeds of about 650/700mbps with the router speedtest app (can't recall the UL speeds but were probably 150 or so). So, getting 550mbps seems to me a bit low...
Maybe you have a better router!
 

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