Future proof wireless-router

[Core]

I did a little search and checked the router recommondation but I was unable to find what I was looking for.

I have VM 20mg, and I want to buy a router, however I am unsure if I should worry about the speed of the router. As in do routers have a limit on how much data they can receive from the cable modem. Should I be worried in the near future that my router will not be able to handle down speeds of 50/100/200 (however high they go)? Or is this purely handled by the modem and a router can handle what ever speed they can handle (i.e. 11Mbs, 54Mbs, 300Mbs)

Thank you in advance for any advice.

[Tricky]

Most routers will do 100mbps some will do 1000mbps such as the apple airport but realistically I cannot see us ever getting 100mb (and constant) to our homes especially via NTL.

I would look for one that could handle 1000mbps between ports and wireless at some of the newer "standards" I.e. greater than 54mpbs

[Core]

So the amount of data a router can handle from WAN is the same as its LAN speed (i.e. a router with 4 LAN ports @ 100MB, WAN port, 300Mb Wireless blah blah can handle a 800Mb broadband connection?)

[OldGeezer]

A router is initially limited to the speed of the WAN port. The throughput will then be further restricted by the rest of the hardware/firmware (e.g. speed of CPU etc.).
See here for some throughput values.

[SMHarman]

With the wireless part of any router you will struggle to get really high speeds. 802.11g is up to 54Mbit/s and you could stream an HD TV signal over that amount of bandwidth so is pretty adequate to the home for the next 3-6 years. Faster speeds are now out there but often require compatible hardware at both ends.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11#802.11g indicates typical speed of g is about 20Mbit/s so if you have a g wireless router and a 50Mbit/s cable connection then the router would be the slowest part of the link. You would need
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11#802.11n
but that will not be a finalised standard until the end of this year and you would most likely end up with a router that is buggy.

The wired part of the router will be restricted by hardware and software.
At the most basic to get speeds over 100Mbit/s you need a router with 1000Mbit/s ports on it to handle speeds of over 100Mbit/s in the wired environment.
Then the software and the processor of the router have to recieve these packets of data and route them. Even if it has high speed ports then the router has to have enough power to be able the traffic.
And finally the devices at the other end of the router need to be able to keep up. The servers and other connections on the internet may be slower, the computer you are writing data to has to write that to the hard disk which also can slow things down.

But as others have already pointed out 50Mbit/s to the home is coming on line now and speed upgrades beyond that will be a while off.

Me I'm still running a version 1.2 Linksys WRT54G and have no plans on replacing it unless it goes pop. I have had it since I got broadband many years ago and it is still doing the job just fine. Any reliable G wireless router should be fine for your needs.