Since I am (sadly) not very networking-educated, I want to ask a question. Does having some other devices "in the way", meaning between my end and the internets any impact on quality of the line?

Few days ago I got me new connection, nice symmetric 30mbit with fiber all the way to the basement of the house. But there has to be a switch on my end cause of a set top box (got me TV as well). Well, I had to plug my old router into that because we also got a notebook at home and I refuse to drag more cables around

When I was at that, I plugged my desktop back into the router thinking it might not be that bad idea as the builtin NAT filters some crap out... But am I not losing any speed, quality, or whatever, going through additional device?

Basically you asked if it's hard to get out of the chair where you sat when you ordered airplane tickets to the other side of the globe.

Of course you could always hit the door on your way out and go to the hospital instead, but the odds of that is very low.

Tell us the devices you are using, their interface speeds and the media over which they connect and we can help better

Your description runs a 30mbit fibre channel, into a switch, that has an old router plugged into it, does not sound incredibly ideal but leads to only speculation.

What kind of router (speeds/ports) are you plugging your Fios into?

What kind of switch (speeds/ports)?

Maybe run a tracert to a known live destination, or hit a site like speedtest with and without your internal hops?

TranceEnergy, nice irony, but I don't quite get it.

rest:

The router is Asus WL-500gP. The switch... umm you got me. I can't remember offhand (at work and cannot check atm). I think it's Zyxel ES-105.

Basically I got no problem to ping at under 10ms around my country (usually 1-2ms to fast servers that are - I guess - in my city. Is that quality proof/test enough?

I can't test the raw speed though, I have yet to find a server fast enough

Edited December 10, 200817 yr by TheWalrus

I would go with something like speedtest.net and get up/down, more than just relying on ms elapsed until server response to a single request.

a tracert or enhanced version of will show you how many miliseconds you are losing between your internal hops. In school we had one that logged in microseconds but the name escapes me.