Is this board intended to route packets using the CPU/Linux kernel or does the CPU act on a control plane on top of the two Ethernet controllers which talk to e

Is this board intended to route packets using the CPU/Linux kernel or does the CPU act on a control plane on top of the two Ethernet controllers which talk to each other directly? Recently I set up a relatively powerful AMD "nuc" as a wifi AP and found my speed to be a dismal 7Mbps - enough for my office needs but I wonder if the cpu is liable to be a bottleneck (it's also possible I set something up very wrong)