villarule123 Posted December 9, 2013 VT Supporter Share Posted December 9, 2013 Just got Fibre activated today, when I do a speedtest with an ethernet cable connected I get 37.5mb/sec but with a wireless connection I only get 22mb/sec? Why is it so drastically different? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samjp26 Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 (edited) To keep it short: Basically, Wi-Fi is exchanging the data through the air via radio signals - air which is shared with many other signals. When data transfers via an ethernet cable, the data is the exclusive 'user' of the cable and so it is able to travel faster. With Wi-Fi data travels like a Ferrari on the M6 at 3pm in the afternoon, with Ethernet data travels like a Ferrari on the M6 at 3am in the morning. Edited December 9, 2013 by samjp26 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davkaus Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 Because instead of using an isolated cable with close to 0 latency and 0 interference, your data is being broadcast alongside all of the other wireless devices in the area. WiFi is inherently slower than an ethernet connection. It might be worth trying different wireless channels which you can change on your router, if your neighbours are using the same channel, changing yours can reduce interference and improve your speed, but if you have the choice, just run a cable. It's always going to have significantly better performance. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samjp26 Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 As Davkaus says, changing the channel that your router is operating on my improve speeds, some more modern routers allow you to change the frequency band also. You can check which channel you're on and also the traffic around the channel your router is operating on by using a program like inSSIDer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villarule123 Posted December 9, 2013 Author VT Supporter Share Posted December 9, 2013 Noooo! Feels like such a waste having a laptop. At least my PS4 will use it all! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samjp26 Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 Which ISP are you with? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villarule123 Posted December 9, 2013 Author VT Supporter Share Posted December 9, 2013 Sky. I'm changing channels and it went to 25mb but then again it did go as high as 30mb earlier, for a moment. The channel was set to auto before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villarule123 Posted December 9, 2013 Author VT Supporter Share Posted December 9, 2013 Changed to channel 4 and it went up to 34mb/sec! Progress. Does this mean I have to keep changing the channels regularly? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limpid Posted December 9, 2013 Administrator Share Posted December 9, 2013 Install wifi analyzer on your android. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davkaus Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 (edited) Changed to channel 4 and it went up to 34mb/sec! Progress. Does this mean I have to keep changing the channels regularly? Probably not. Most people keep their channel to the default, which is either auto or 6. Auto should try to pick a channel which is either not in use or not being heavily used, so if you're one of the only connections manually set, other wifi networks set to auto will generally pick something else, so by manually setting to anything other than 6 you should be in pretty good shape. Edited December 9, 2013 by Davkaus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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