Am I being too technical?

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My cable modem kept needing to be reset every day or it would start dropping packets, and Comcast said I probably needed a new modem because it was slower than my service (it was faster than the service when I got it back in 2011 or whenever they started charging $8/month for modem rental, sometime between 2011-2013)..
I figured I should upgrade my router/switch to gigabit as well, however I was just looking at a cheap wifi/router/switch at Wal-mart and am wondering, is this only 100mbit Ethernet?
It says "four Fast Ethernet ports". The way I learned it there is Ethernet (10mbit), Fast Ethernet (100mbit), and Gigabit Ethernet (1000mbit).
Why would Linksys, a subsidiary of Cisco write "fast Ethernet" on the box if they mean Gigabit?
https://www.linksys.com/us/p/P-E5350/
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Linksys-Dual-Band-AC1000-WiFi-Router-Wifi-5-Technology-Black/782177881
The other odd thing, why would it have gigabit wireless but slower wired? I'm used to thinking of 802.11a/b or 802.11g where the wired is faster.

Anybody have a clue if they mean fast Ethernet or gigabit?
Also anybody care to suggest a wifi/router/switch device with at least 4 wired ports for under $50 including S&H?
I was looking to upgrade to gigabit for the wired switch, but if those are too expensive then I might as well keep this, which I got second hand for free a long time ago:
https://www.linksys.com/us/support-product?pid=01t80000003KXPxAAO

 

Comcast said it was now 200mb[s, and so I bought a cable modem rated for 686mbps. It's been upgraded to 200 since January of 2020, but I only started having trouble in the last couple months, and it was getting worse. It went from having to reset about once a week to every couple of days, to every day, and then sometimes twice a day. It was getting annoying, and so I got a new cable modem.
This was the second cheapest at Wal-Mart on Comcast's list, and they were sold out of the $56 ones. Best Buy was more expensive, as was Amazon when you factored in S&H.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/ARRIS-SU...r-Internet-providers-plans-300-Mbps/691396253

Anyways, I thought with 200mbps internet I should upgrade the network to gigabit. I'm using that old Linksys fast ethernet/802.11g wifi/router/switch for the network.
Of course, it won't make any difference for my old WIn98SE/XP computer that I use as the main file server for important data, since it's only got Fast Ethernet NICs (if the built-in integrated counts Network Interface Card, though it does also have a second card I got from a friend when I only had two computers. That card might be slow Ethernet, I can't recall. The other computer had slow Ethernet so it didn't matter and ICS worked when I was short on cash). The Windows 7 computer and the Windows 10 on the other hand can use the faster speeds.

 

Well, regardless of actual throughput, if you use your internal network to transfer files from one device to another, why not the router / switch GB speed as well? At least it would not be a limiting factor in your internal network.

 

Well, back when I got my existing device I only had one computer with a gigabit NIC, so it being only Fast Ethernet didn't matter as there was nothing for it to talk to at those speeds.
I'm only now, about 10 years later thinking of getting a new one with gigabit.

Although I recall something about one particular Linksys switch (not the router/switch I have, an 8-port switch) that was still available in 2007. It had a quirk in that if a slow Ethernet device tried to use the network (or maybe just found) the entire network would drop to 10mbit instead of 100 until the 10mbit device either dropped off or stopped using the network.
Do Linksys router/switches still do that, and would the gigabit ones drop to 100mbit whenever a Fast Ethernet device is detected, preventing full speed transfers between 2 machines with gigabit? I store most of my office documents such as my resume on my old Win98SE/XP computer which only has 100mbit Fast Ethernet. SWitches, unlike hubs should handle connections on different ports differently.

 

Even 10 years back, many things were for sale that connect to the internet (though I don't know what connection speed they all have, the TV, and DVD player, so even back then I didn't see a reason to make the connection possibly limited by a switch, when there was even then almost no difference in price for either one.

I believe there were more devices that had this kind of switching behaviour back in the day, and possibly there still are. Just something to be careful of when selecting a switch, I guess. I've also had a router that more or less crashed if more than four devices connected to it, wirelessly or otherwise. Some wireless access points nowadays have a thing where they half the wireless connection speed if more than a given amount of wireless devices are connected to it. Or the 2.4 GHz band is unlimited, but the 5.0 GHz band is limited to 2 devices or something like that. Not something that is obvious without looking at in-depth reviews.

 

The company I was working for back then found that quirk about the Linksys switches the hard way.
It's not like we the techs had a choice about what 8-port switches they decide to purchase and ship to us in the satellite office.
We were field service techs and the 10mbit device belong to the client, and we needed to plug our P.O.S. system into the same network they had in the restaurant for the DSL so they could verify credit cards. Well, I'm simplifying it, but one internet connection and we plugged the switch into a single port on their network so the POS was on it's own network on it's own subnet.
Considering that at the time credit card verification could be done with dial-up, the internet connection being limited to 10mbit wouldn't have been an issue (especially since a lot of clients only had 4mbit synchronous DSL connections), but it did create lag for the terminals to be limited to 10mbit when connecting to the server.
We couldn't figure out why because there wasn't enough traffic to jam things on the P.O.S. systems' network.
Then we found out about that quirk and it was dropping the speed because the one port connected to the other network where the internet gateway/DSL was located was operating at 10mbit even though it was on a separate subnet.
Going to a nearby Best Buy and buying a different brand switch fixed the problem.

Sorry if I'm not remembering the details perfectly, it was back in 2007 and I haven't had that job since 2008.

 

Maybe I should have started a new thread instead of necroing this, but I don't know what to make of this description:
https://www.sears.com/phicomm-doesnotapply-phicomm-ke-2p-ac1300-dual-band/p-A086105422

Pot pan lid rack and toilet paper holder stand?!? On a router?

Is this some new terminology or jargon that came about since I took my Network+ exam?

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On another note, can somebody recommend a cheap device for both wired and wifi with gigabit Ethernet and 802.11n wireless that also does port forwarding, NAT, DHCP and firewall?
(Basically everything my WRT54G does but with Gigabit and 802.11n)

 

Would this be good?
https://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6844951&CatId=373

Other candidates from Tigerdirect:

1. https://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4714048&CatId=373
2. https://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=503016&CatId=373
3. https://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8992896&CatId=373

 

Well, somebody else on another board also recommended TP-Link.
So, I found an AC1750 new on Amazon for $47, looks like the seller was having a special because it's $59 now.
However, they just delivered it ahead of schedule, as I wasn't expecting it until Tuesday, but I find something disconcerting on the back.

Shouldn't that be 100X faster than standard Ethernet? Gigabit is 10X faster than Fast Ethernet, but standard Ethernet is only 10mbps. Granted, I haven't seen a computer that uses standard Ethernet since the start of the 21st century, but that was the term used back at the end of the '90s when asked "Standard or Fast Ethernet?".

EDIT:spoilered the possible drift into the background experiences of Standard vs Fast.

Spoiler

Back when I bought an Ethernet card for my old PowerMac 6500/300 (my mother worked for a school and got it for 1/2 the price in any stores, and my high school used Macs. Her school used Macs. They showed off a Mac lab on the tour of Harper college, so I thought Harper used Macs but it turned out those were the only Macs in the school and I probably should have gotten a Windows computer. Buyer's regret) I had a choice of spending $35 for a "standard Ethernet card" (they were on closeout for obvious reasons) or $170 for a "Fast Ethernet card". I went with standard, which was actually fine for the next 2 years when using a "1 meg modem" until I got a Win98SE computer with Fast Ethernet, and even then it wasn't that bad save for the initial pain of moving stuff from Virtual PC to the real PC, and I just started the copy and went to bed.
Heck, the standard Ethernet card was still fine when I was upgraded to a 4mbit internet connection.

Well, I did ask if I was too technical, but geese, if you are going to use terms that have special meaning in network jargon, use them correctly. Otherwise people can get confused. The company is in the network hardware business, they should know the jargon even if it is outdated or obsolete. The difference between "standard Ethernet" and "fast Ethernet" was on the Network+ study material back in the early to mid 2000's.

 

Well, according to Windows (10, 7) I'm only getting 100mbps wired with a TP-Link 1730AC A7.
Could it be because one computer on the network is only fast Ethernet, even though it is turned off? I thought if you had a slower device on the network they negotiated speed and the faster devices would slow down when talking to the slower device, but work faster when talking to each other.
I recall it worked that way with a mixed slow/fast Ethernet.

Do I need to do something in the router config to enable gigabit Ethernet?