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All of my computers at home are gigabit compatible and I'm planning to upgrade my old switch to a gigabit switch .

The question is do I also need to upgrade my old router ? I'm only running internet speeds up to 10 mb, and only aiming to upgrade the file transfer speeds of my local network.

router ---
          |
      ___switch___ 
     |      |     |
   user1   user2  user3

I'm currently using cat5e lan cables.

2 Answers 2

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No, you do not need to upgrade your router. However, there are routers with built in switches. You could replace two items on your network with one. If you choose later to upgrade your service, you would be covered by having the faster connection. Also, simpler networks are easier to troubleshoot.

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That approach looks fine to me, though if you were thinking of upgrading your router for other reasons (security, for example), I would do that instead of getting a switch.

I have gigabit Ethernet on my home network (Gigabit wired router + 3 Gigabit switches + wireless router configured as Access Point), and it makes moving files between machine so much faster - roughly 1GB/minute.

You don't need the speed on the WAN side since your ISP is likely the bottleneck.

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