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Improving internet speed WiFi vs Ethernet

Yougish
2: Seeker
2: Seeker

Hi

Is there any benefit using Ethernet anymore compared to wifi. I tested yesterday am Ethernet cable and my ping reduced to 5ms from 8 or 10ms on WiFi. Download and upload speed are very similar on both connection WiFi and Ethernet. My internet is used only by me in a small studio so no issue with bandwidth.

So I was wondering why some people prefer cable while WiFi is just as strong. Does 3ms to 5ms more make a difference if you don’t game.

2 REPLIES 2

Cynric
16: Advanced member
16: Advanced member

If you have a neighbour (or even several neighbours) who have very strong WiFi you may find it easier to use cable. Also you may be like me and use more traditional computers than portable devices and want them to "talk" to each other at high speed by making use of 1.0, 2.5 or even 10.0 Gbps ethernet.

 

Anonymous
Not applicable

It all depends on what you are doing!  Ping here is not a big thing, the difference is less than 2ms.  But I have my data-hungry devices that don't need to move around either connected directly to the router or to a switch.

 

That leaves what for many people is the elephant in the room - laptops!  Frankly, the built-in  WiFi is atrocious!  So, I have the laptops all kitted out with some tiny WiFi dongles that sync through most of the house at 866Mbps and can sustain 300Mbps transfer rates.

 

As for gaming, I'm using Stadia, and with a ping to the servers just 1ms more than my ping to The VF Manchester latency here at least is very definitely not an issue (sudden data rate drops every hour on the hour recently were - but that seems to have abated now).

 

It's horses for courses, and a mix of WiFi and ethernet will only hurt you if you trip over trailing cables!