Your router's CPU is throttling your Wi-Fi -- here's which 6 settings to disable first

A router can throttle your Wi‑Fi performance if certain features offload work to the router’s CPU instead of hardware acceleration. The article points to Quality of Service (QoS) as a common culprit: it reorganizes traffic but forces the CPU to process packets, potentially slowing speeds even if your router is marketed for higher throughput. Built-in security suites can also add overhead by inspecting traffic against signature databases, with router makers like Ubiquiti acknowledging that enabling IDS/IPS may reduce performance. It also flags parental controls using category filtering, router-hosted VPN encryption, and recommends disabling the highest-cost settings first.