How Much Router Speed Do You Actually Need on the NBN?

The Australian reality nobody tells you

Let's start with something most vendors gloss over: at a huge number of commercial addresses across Australia, the NBN still tops out at around 50 Mbps download — and a much lower upload, often around 20 Mbps. That's because those premises are on copper-based FTTN (Fibre to the Node) rather than fibre running all the way to the building.

Ordering business fibre or Enterprise Ethernet is an option, but for a typical small office it's usually either technical overkill or simply over budget. So the practical truth is this: a lot of Australian SMBs are running their entire office on a modest link.

In real-world conditions you might only see 20–30 Mbps of usable throughput, shared across maybe 20 devices, while also leaning on cloud apps and running VoIP phones.

The good news? That setup absolutely can work well. It just needs a bit of QoS (Quality of Service) management — not a bigger, more expensive router.

The big myth: "I need a fast, expensive router"

Here's the central myth we want to bust today: "My internet feels slow, so I need a faster router."

For most Australian SMBs on a ~50 Mbps NBN connection, the router is not the bottleneck — the internet link is.

Even a modest Meraki MX appliance like the MX67 or MX68 has far more firewall throughput than a 50 Mbps connection could ever use. You could push that link to its absolute limit and the appliance wouldn't break a sweat.

So paying for a much bigger box purely for "speed" is wasted money when your link is the ceiling. You can't make 50 Mbps go faster by buying a router rated for ten times that.

That said — and this matters — router choice still genuinely matters for two reasons. Right-sizing isn't about buying the cheapest thing; it's about buying the right thing.

Reason 1: Security and VPN overhead

The headline "firewall throughput" figure on a datasheet is the best-case number, with the appliance doing the bare minimum.

The moment you switch on Advanced Security features — IDS/IPS, malware scanning, content filtering — and site-to-site VPN, the appliance starts doing deep packet inspection. That work takes processing power, so your effective throughput drops below the top-line number.

For an SMB on a 50/20 link this rarely becomes a problem, because your NBN ceiling is so low. But it's the reason you should:

• Check the model's throughput figure with security features turned on, not just the top-line number.
• Note the recommended client count for the model.
• Leave yourself a little headroom.

We're not going to quote specific Mbps figures here — those change, and you should always check the current datasheet for the exact model. The principle is what counts: the real-world number is lower than the headline number once security is doing its job.

Reason 2: QoS and traffic-shaping — the real value

This is where router choice genuinely earns its keep on a constrained Australian link. QoS is what separates a smooth office from crackling, dropping phone calls. It's the real value — not raw speed.

The contention problem, plainly

Picture your office: around 20 devices, cloud files syncing in the background, and VoIP phones — all sharing 20–30 Mbps.

Without prioritisation, everything competes equally for that pipe. So the moment someone:

• uploads a big file,
• kicks off a backup,
• or streams video or music,

...that activity can starve your phone calls of bandwidth and make them choppy and unreliable. The network has no way of knowing a Teams call matters more than a software update — unless you tell it.

How the Meraki MX handles it

The Meraki MX has a Layer 7 (application-aware) traffic-shaping engine. Because it can identify what the traffic actually is, you can:

• Set VoIP and video conferencing to High priority.
• Throttle bulk traffic to Low — file sharing, software updates, backups, video and music streaming.
• Apply per-client bandwidth limits so no single device hogs the link.
• Tag voice with DSCP 46 (EF) so it gets end-to-end priority across the network.

There's one step people miss that makes or breaks the whole thing:

You must enter your real WAN uplink speeds — both download AND upload — in the Meraki dashboard. The prioritisation engine uses those figures to understand the actual ceiling it's working within. Set them wrong and your QoS simply won't behave.

The upload trap (this is the big one)

Here's the part that catches Australian businesses out: NBN upload is much smaller than download. On a 50/20 service you've got roughly 20 Mbps up — and on that thin upload pipe, VoIP and cloud backups are fighting for the same space.

A VoIP call needs a steady trickle of upload to send your voice out. A cloud backup will happily grab every spare bit of upload it can. Guess which one wins by default?

That's why, on a constrained NBN link, shaping the upload usually matters most for call quality. Get the upload prioritisation right and most "our phones keep cutting out" problems disappear.

We've seen exactly this play out. In our real-world write-up on fixing crackling VoIP calls, prioritising VoIP, throttling bulk traffic on a Meraki MX, and adding a dedicated voice VLAN fixed the problem on a 50/30 connection — without touching the internet plan.

Right-sizing your Meraki MX

So what should you actually buy? Here's the honest guidance:

• ~20-device office on a 50/20-ish NBN link: an MX67 or MX68 is ample. The MX68 gives you a few extra ports and a couple of PoE ports, which can be handy. Either has far more capacity than your link will ever use, plus the QoS engine you need.
• Step up to the MX75 when you have:
  • more users,
  • multiple sites with site-to-site VPN,
  • a faster fibre link,
  • or you simply want more headroom with all the security features switched on.

The honest line we'll always give you: don't pay for throughput your NBN link can't deliver. Put that effort and budget into QoS configuration instead — that's what your staff will actually feel every day.

When you genuinely DO need a bigger router

To be fair, there are real scenarios where throughput headroom matters and a bigger appliance is the right call:

• You upgrade to business fibre or Enterprise Ethernet running into the hundreds of Mbps.
• You run heavy site-to-site VPN between offices (see our site-to-site VPN guide for how that load adds up).
• You have many more users than a typical small office.

In those cases, the appliance can genuinely become the bottleneck — and sizing up is money well spent, not wasted.

It's not a Meraki-only trick

We specialise in Cisco Meraki, but let's be straight: any good business router with proper QoS can do this. The principles — prioritise voice, throttle bulk, shape the upload, enter your real link speeds — apply everywhere.

What Meraki does particularly well is make application-aware shaping easy from the dashboard, with sensible defaults and clear visibility into what's actually using your link. If you're weighing up the long-term picture, our Meraki vs UniFi total-cost-of-ownership comparison is worth a read — because the cheapest box on day one isn't always the cheapest over five years.

And if Meraki isn't the right fit for your situation, we're happy to supply gear from other manufacturers too. The goal is the right outcome, not pushing one brand.

Let TYO Store right-size and tune it for you

If your calls are crackling, your backups are choking the office, or you're just not sure which appliance you actually need, that's exactly what we do.

TYO Store can:

• Right-size the appliance for your real NBN service and device count — no overspending on speed your link can't deliver.
• Configure QoS properly: voice prioritisation, bulk throttling, upload shaping, DSCP tagging and per-client limits.
• Set up a dedicated voice VLAN to keep calls clean.
• Supply the right gear — Meraki MX67, MX68, MX75, or another manufacturer if that suits you better.

Get in touch with TYO Store and we'll help you build a network that works beautifully within your real Australian NBN connection — not against it.