# Is it worth doing a link aggregation? **URL:** \ **Category:** Plex Media Server\ **Tags:** server-synology\ **Created:** [May 13, 2020, 8:51pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/is-it-worth-doing-a-link-aggregation/589844 "2020-05-13T20:51:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Malachai87](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8edcca/32.png) [@Malachai87](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Malachai87)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2020, 8:51pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/is-it-worth-doing-a-link-aggregation/589844/1 "2020-05-13T20:51:06Z")
I have a Netgear nighthawk and a Synology DS918+ that runs my plex server. I have a buffering issue when I try to stream my video’s at high quality resolution, so I have settled for reducing the quality to get through the movie but I want to know, would it be beneficial to turn on link aggregation on my router and server to help with video/speed quality while streaming Plex Movies? ---
**Author:** ![tom80H](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/tom80h/32/19753_2.png) [@tom80H](https://forums.plex.tv/u/tom80H)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2020, 9:29pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/is-it-worth-doing-a-link-aggregation/589844/2 "2020-05-13T21:29:17Z")
Depends on the actual bottleneck in your setup. If the client that’s buffering is connected via WIFI, it’s unlikely a link aggregation will do you much good. If the buffering is due to the Synology not living up to some required transcoding, a link aggregation won’t change the cause of that transcoding. Long story short… you might need to provide some more details to get a more helpful response. ---
**Author:** ![TeknoJunky](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/teknojunky/32/165055_2.png) [@TeknoJunky](https://forums.plex.tv/u/TeknoJunky)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2020, 9:29pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/is-it-worth-doing-a-link-aggregation/589844/3 "2020-05-13T21:29:23Z")
short answer is no. link aggregation does not help speed up a single connection. what it does, is allow multiple connections to share the load over multiple NICs. ---
**Author:** ![Malachai87](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8edcca/32.png) [@Malachai87](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Malachai87)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2020, 9:34pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/is-it-worth-doing-a-link-aggregation/589844/4 "2020-05-13T21:34:39Z")
So if I am understanding everyone correctly, doing a link aggregate really wont help improve my streaming capabilities or even help with streaming Plex from an external location. It will only help if I am just transferring Multiple files between my PC and NAS. ---
**Author:** ![TeknoJunky](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/teknojunky/32/165055_2.png) [@TeknoJunky](https://forums.plex.tv/u/TeknoJunky)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2020, 9:36pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/is-it-worth-doing-a-link-aggregation/589844/5 "2020-05-13T21:36:32Z")
mostly correct. it may not even speed up from PC \<\> nas, because there is still only 1 NIC from your PC (which is the bottleneck). if you had TWO pc doing transfers, they could theoretically hit the nas via TWO nics (assuming the nas has the disk IO/read/write speed to saturate 2gbs of traffic). as far as external/remote streaming, that is entirely limited by your internet upload speed. Unless maybe you have more than 1gig upload, then you would need a router with 10gbit wan (which is highly unlikely) (and probably very expensive). Some older routers may only have 100mbs wan connections, so in that case a newer router with 1gbit would help if you had more than 100m upload. ---
**Author:** ![Malachai87](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8edcca/32.png) [@Malachai87](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Malachai87)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2020, 10:00pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/is-it-worth-doing-a-link-aggregation/589844/6 "2020-05-13T22:00:08Z")
Thank you for the help ---
**Author:** ![ChuckPa](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/chuckpa/32/79710_2.png) [@ChuckPa](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ChuckPa)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2020, 11:06pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/is-it-worth-doing-a-link-aggregation/589844/7 "2020-05-13T23:06:41Z")
If I may add to Tekno? Think of it as: 10 Mbps = old dirt road over a stone bridge 100 Mbps = 25 year old narrow two lane road over two-lane bridge 1 GbE = new concrete bridge Aggregation is like adding extra lanes on the bridge. No single lane can go faster than the design but now you can get more traveling at that max speed at a time. ---
**Author:** ![DJ-BrianC](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/dj-brianc/32/81840_2.png) [@DJ-BrianC](https://forums.plex.tv/u/DJ-BrianC)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 4:05pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/is-it-worth-doing-a-link-aggregation/589844/8 "2020-05-14T16:05:01Z")
I have dual 1 gig links between server and storage boxes. It doesn’t speed anything up but it does provide redundancy. I knocked a cable out doing maintenance and never knew untill a week later when I logged in and saw a link down warning. Plex never hiccup. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/plex/original/3X/2/a/2acb9765406f63293d357b4ec509ec39aa28f2ad.png) [@system](https://forums.plex.tv/u/system)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2020, 4:11pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/is-it-worth-doing-a-link-aggregation/589844/9 "2020-08-12T16:11:42Z")
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