Why is Wi-Fi slow compared to Ethernet?
Plug it in!
You just wired your PC up to some ultra-fast internet connection which is super exciting because surely this will be no more letting go out of your favorite game or thrilling Netflix, then eager to experience this kind of speed on your laptop or mobile device, you buy a fancy looking Wi-Fi router and you key in your password and what?? 😑
Your speeds aren’t even half of what you are getting with a wired connection
Well, unfortunately, the wireless is always going to be slower than wired.
You won’t be connecting an Ethernet cable to your smartphone any time soon.
It’s usually worth running Ethernet cables to the devices that matter if you can — gaming and media PCs (or consoles), backup devices, and set-top boxes being just a few examples.
It’s a near-universal truth that becomes more and more obvious the fast you try to go. Even if you spent tons of money on the high-end wireless gear.
But then electromagnetic waves move faster through the air than electrons do through a wire. So why is it??
Well, let’s start with the most obvious.
Signal range.
If you’re using an Ethernet cable and you want gigabit speeds, you can have a cable run of up to a hundred meters. This is because the signal inside the cable doesn’t deteriorate until you have a long cable but radio signals flying such as Wi-Fi are prone to signal degradation.
Wi-Fi Interference
They are just blasted everywhere meaning they must complete with walls and other network traffic.
See unlike Ethernet where your device gets one dedicated pipe that runs to your modem or router there’s only so much spectrum (2.4 GHz-5GHz) available for your WiFi-enabled laptop and your phone and what that means is that your device will be often broadcasting on the same frequency or channel as others which can lead to more interference that can further degrade the signal and give your modem more work to sort out all of it.
Usually, there are two reasons why your Wireless would be slower.
- If you are not getting a good signal, like you're far away. You would be thinking I’m getting a connection out of my home, but not in my bedroom. The reason is the WiFi signals won’t penetrate through the walls easily. So change your modem.
- Another reason is the wireless frequency band you are using (2.4GHz) is crowded with other people's signals. So even when if we get all bars for signal strength the connection is still slow. The best thing to do then is to change to another frequency band, like 5GHz
WiFi Modem
Connection speed and quality aren’t about raw bandwidth. Latency is also a key factor.
In this case, latency is the delay in how long it takes for traffic to get from a device to its destination. We often refer to latency as “ping” in the networking and online gaming worlds.
If reducing latency as much as possible is your concern — for example, if you’re playing online games and need reaction time to be as quick as possible — you’re probably better off with a wired Ethernet connection. Yes, there will be other latency that factors in along the Internet path between your device and the gaming server, but every little bit helps.
On the other hand, if you’re just streaming videos, listening to music, or browsing the web, latency won’t matter much to you.
Ethernet is faster because there is very less interference from the external world and has a full duplex technology (can upload and download at the same time) to send data through a wire whereas WiFi is disturbed easily and can just upload or download data at a given time (Half Duplex).
So, we need to either switch up to different channels of WiFi or get a powerful modem for WiFi to reach your bedroom or use a wired device once in for all.
We can’t completely depend on one thing because the world we are living in is nothing without the internet.
“Stay Strong” I whispered to my Wi-Fi signal.
SS
Thanks for reading.
Until next time
Peace, Love and Gratitude.
