Will my internet be faster if I use wireless AND wired at the same time?
Okay so my internet is getting a little laggy for games and it’s pretty annoying so I’m wondering if I connect to my house’s wi-fi network AND plug in the ethernet will it be faster or will it slow it down? The router gives both wireless and wired. Oh and does it help if I bridge it together?
4 Responses
Dimo J
02 Sep 2010
Sarge
02 Sep 2010
I don’t think you can connect to both at once, but give it a try and tell us how it worked out for you.
Matt
02 Sep 2010
You won’t be "bridging"… but you can’t anyway as you only have one "internet" feed. Wireless and wired go to the same router/switch.
Go wired for the fastest.
WiFi in theory is faster than your internet connection (from your cable modem or dsl to the provider) so it shouldn’t be slowing you down… however, many times, it will lose signal strength and speed will decrease, or even drop out for split seconds.
If you have hardwire capability… always use hardwire.
Chris M
02 Sep 2010
For one, I’m sorry, but that won’t work at all as you can only use one at a time.
However, if you want to reduce lag, it is best to use a wired connection.
As far as speeds however, neither will boost performance. For reference, wireless (G) runs at a max speed of 54 mbps, and a standard ethernet (wired) connection runs at about a max speed of 100mbps. While obviously the ethernet is faster, your internet connection will probably be under 20mbps so neither speed will matter.
What is affecting your lag is not actually speed but latency. Latency is the time a message takes to get from your computer, to the server, then back.
If you want to try different configurations and get information on this quickly and easily, you can use the ‘ping’ command on your computer.
To do this, you need to open the command prompt. In Windows XP, use the Run option in the Start Menu. In Vista/7 just type into the Search bar the following: "cmd" and in both cases press enter.
This will bring up a little black menu box. Type in "ping http://www.google.com".
What this will do is send a small message to http://www.google.com (you can use any website), then count how long it takes google to send a message back. At the end, it will give you an approximate time in milliseconds of how long it took (in my case, an average of 62ms or 0.062 seconds).
If you do this and your times stay lower that what the game says, then the problem is either your internet provider or the game servers (in some cases, the other players).
Your wire ethernet will be running 100 Mbps.
Your wireless will be running 54 Mbps or less.
Your Internet connection will be 1.5 or 6.0 Mbps.
You are delivering trunks at 70 mph on your Freeway (Wired) or your are delivering trucks at 35 mph on the Streets (Wireless) inside your house.
You also packages that are delivered by an old man shuffling about at 1 mph, or maybe a kid briskly walking at 4 mph (your cable/dsl Internet connection.)
No. Your packages are being delivered by foot. Two roads inside your house will still simply leave piles of packages waiting at the dock while the old man is carrying everything by foot, one package at a time.