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. We often refer to latency as “ping” in the networking and online gaming worlds. In this case, latency is the delay in how long it takes for traffic to get from from a device to its destination. RELATED: How Latency Can Make Even Fast Internet Connections Feel SlowĬonnection speed and quality isn’t just about raw bandwidth. How Much Less Latency Does Ethernet Offer? If you’re curious about the difference in local file transfer speed, try transferring a large file between two computers while they’re both connected to Ethernet and while they’re both connected to Wi-Fi. If you have devices that stream from a media server on your network (like Plex or Kodi), an Ethernet connection will give you a considerable boost in streaming quality.If you have multiple devices that back up to a NAS, backup server, or shared hard drive, backups will go faster over an Ethernet connection.Here is a small chart showing the best speeds you can get through different Ethernet cables and modern Wi-Fi networks. And, unlike with Wi-Fi, that speed is consistent. However, even the Cat5e cable in common use supports up to 1 Gbps. The exact maximum speed of your Ethernet cable depends on the type of Ethernet cable you’re using. On the other hand, a wired Ethernet connection can theoretically offer up to 10 Gbps, if you have a Cat6A cable. RELATED: Upgrade Your Wireless Router to Get Faster Speeds and More Reliable Wi-Fi Even though this is a maximum speed for all your wireless devices to share (and you likely won’t get those speeds in the real world), Wi-Fi has become good enough to handle most of our daily tasks. Wi-Fi has gotten significantly faster over the last few years, thanks to new standards like Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), which offers a maximum speed of about 9.6 gigabits per second. But the real-world differences are smaller than you might think. How Much Faster Is Ethernet?Įthernet is just plain faster than Wi-Fi - there’s no getting around that fact. If reliability and speed are the priority, Ethernet cables cannot be beat. Ethernet connections are also less prone to interference and have lower latency than even the best Wi-Fi networks.

Wi-Fi 6E, which is currently the fastest Wi-Fi officially available, can only reach speeds of a few gigabits per second. The best Ethernet cables you’ll commonly find are Cat6A cables - they’re rated for transfer speeds of 10 gigabits per second (Gbps or Gb/s), and they’ll deliver that very consistently.

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