ethernet slower than wifi? .:confused:

[dayvurd]

so ive been downloading GTA 5 today because i had some corrupt data and had to do a re install, im about 30GB into it and i noticed that im only doing about a 3mb/s download over Ethernet.

my ISP is virgin media and its 100MB speed. i changed over to a wifi dongle and it jumped up to 9mb/s...correct me if im wrong but i thought Ethernet was always faster?

now there is some things im wondering. my router is downstairs, the reason i dont use wifi more often is because the signal is poor and it drops out. so i bought an Ethernet plug that goes into the wall socket, then into the computer. it has the capabilities to run 500mbps apparently, so it would have no problem at all i would have thought

ive also checked my Mobo's drivers for the network connections and all drivers are up to date. over on ookla i was pulling 30Mb DL speed on ethernet.

could this be the plug im using in the wall interfering?

 

[SeekaX]

DLAN is a hit and miss thing. For example i have the router in my room and we use DLAN to connect the switch in the hallway and my flatmate's PC. He gets roughly 170Mbit/s, but anything connected to the switch in the hallway can't even really use the internet, it just lags out.

 

[chris84]

Ethernet is generally faster than WIFI especially if you're using cat5e or cat6 into Gb ports. Cat5 cable or using 10/100 ports will restrict the speed to 100Mb/s or about 12MB/s. Even if you could get more than 100Mb/s over wifi I would still choose 100Mb/s ethernet. It's more stable and has less overheads per packet so the latency is much better.

DLAN is ok but I wouldn't go back to using them. The 500Mb/s is deceiving because most of them only have 10/100 ethernet ports so point to point they will never do more than 100Mb/s.

It's too easy to interfere with the speed of power line adapters. The speed you get will depend on the quality of the cable, the distance due to interference from electricity in the lines around it and whether it goes direct or through a mains board. Powerline adapters suffer from a lot of re transmissions where packets are lost of a response confirming receipt isn't received, your system automatically re transmits adding to the overhead.

Probably more info than you needed. In your case I'd use wifi for downloads/internet browsing and powerline adapters for gaming, latency should be better than wifi.