Getting 2.5gbe From Modem With Gigabit Router

[mothercow]

My current setup is an ISP-provided modem that has a 2.5gbe port plugged into an ASUS RT-AX5400 which I bought for the additional features and performance as the ISP modem/router kind of sucks. When I bought it, I didn't have any devices that could do >1gbps so the fact that it was only gigabit didn't matter. I now have a couple of devices with 2.5gbe. I'm wondering if there's a way to get the full 2.5gbps connection to my 2.5gbe devices without replacing the router. The ASUS router supports link aggregation for both WAN and LAN afaik, but I'm not sure if that would help in this situation. Any help is appreciated!

 

[ColinTaylor]

Does your ISP contract provide you with speeds greater than 1Gbps? Just because the ISP-supplied modem has a 2.5GbE port it doesn't mean that they're giving you that speed.

Even if they are providing you with a download speed greater than 1Gbps, as you said, your RT-AX5400 only has 1GbE ports. So the only way to get greater throughput would be if the ISP modem could be reconfigured to use two 1GbE ports in link aggregation mode. That would give a theoretical combined throughput to multiple LAN devices of up to 2Gbps (minus overheads).

 

[mothercow]

Does your ISP contract provide you with speeds greater than 1Gbps? Just because the ISP-supplied modem has a 2.5GbE port it doesn't mean that they're giving you that speed.

Even if they are providing you with a download speed greater than 1Gbps, as you said, your RT-AX5400 only has 1GbE ports. So the only way to get greater throughput would be if the ISP modem could be reconfigured to use two 1GbE ports in link aggregation mode. That would give a theoretical combined throughput to multiple LAN devices of up to 2Gbps (minus overheads).

My ISP does provide 2gbps download speed.

So, using link aggregation I would still only get 1gbps per device on up to 2 devices simultaneously (minus overhead)?

 

[ColinTaylor]

So, using link aggregation I would still only get 1gbps per device on up to 2 devices simultaneously (minus overhead)?

Check the options for your specific router model, but AFAIK you can only setup link aggregation for WAN or LAN, not both. Therefore a client connected to one of the LAN ports will still be limited to gigabit speed.

But the more LAN clients you have (concurrently active) the more likely you are to achieve near 2Gbps aggregated throughput.

 

[Tech Junky]

USB dongle? Cheap and easy to test.

 

[mothercow]

USB dongle? Cheap and easy to test.

Not sure what you mean by this. What would I use a USB dongle for?

 

[Tech Junky]

Not sure what you mean by this. What would I use a USB dongle for?

For 2.5 on the WAN side. There's an option on Asus to use a USB instead of the built in ports.

 

[Wolfclaw]

Or as I did use a cheap ex-corp micro PC with multiple 2.5G NICs or one the specialist pc's with multi 2.5G NICs as your router (hint it's Proxmox based) and then the Asus as an AP.