Mark said:
That looks right, but shouldn't the Waif be connected to the switch
chip? It is a part of the LAN.
I supposed it depends on whether you consider the diagram to be physical
or logical
In the hardware, a LAN packet can't make its way to the Wifi, without
the router chip processing it. And as far as I know, they're separate
subnets, with a different set of IP addresses on the Wifi, than
are used on the switch LAN chips. So the router does its routing
function (logically) amongst three items.
But for local traffic, like if LAN_#1 wants to talk to LAN_#2,
that can be done without the router finding out. And that is
how LAN to LAN can be wire speed, limited only by the internal
design of the switch chip.
But once the router chip becomes involved, it is a rate limiting
step. The Wifi also has limits, and it's hard for me to guess whether
all Wifi routers will be limited by the Wifi part, or by the processing
that goes on in the router.
My first wired router, when the packets go to the router chip, it
was slow as molasses. My WAN to LAN was around 3MB/sec. More modern
equipment can do better than that.
I don't own a Wifi router like the one in the diagram. I have a couple routers,
but they're wired and don't have wireless. With regard to IP addresses, the
info there is from reading other people's posts.
Paul
