I'm moving to a new place. I'll be getting gigabit internet service because I use backup cloud services.

The place I'm in now has ethernet ports on the walls where I can connect a cable to. I have my TVs physically connected and my laptop connected via a router serving one of the TVs and the laptop. I don't know about the new place if there are ethernet jacks in the new place. But, in any case, I am under the impression that Wifi speeds can never get up to the gigabit speeds available through physical cables. Is my understanding correct?

I also saw at Costco a Netgear Nighthawk AX6 AX5400 WIFI 6 Router and on the package, one of the blurbs say, "Ideal for Gigabit Internet Speeds" which is why I'm asking my question. Is WIFI 6 speeds close to gigabit speed? Another blurb says "4.3X Faster, up to 5.4Gbps." I don't know how the numbers and speed convert to one another.

Bottom line is: Do I need physical ethernet jacks installed to make the best use of the gigabit internet speed that I'll be paying for or is WIFI technology improved to the point that it equals physical connections?

What is your bandwidth allocation from the ISP?
Ie 56k, 128kb … j/k … one megabit or 10 Mb or 100 Mb?

Wired gigabit Ethernet switches and media are common as dirt, and have been the defacto standard for wired connections for several years. Fact is that most of the end devices you have (streaming devices and TV's) probably aren't wired gigabit, and only exceed 100MB when connected wirelessly. I've seen wireless stuff up to ~860MB, but I'm not out there looking at all the new standards... I believe WIFI 5 or 6 is much faster, in theory.

Whether or not WiFi can keep up with a gigabit internet connection may be a moot point when you are backing up your computers to the cloud, which is dependent on your upload speed.

I don’t know how gigabit connections work, but every internet connection I’ve ever had was much slower uploading than downloading. As an example, my current connection is 400mbps download, but only 12mbps upload.

quote:

I am under the impression that Wifi speeds can never get up to the gigabit speeds available through physical cables. Is my understanding correct?

Actually WiFi 6 802.11ax can be faster and even 802.11ac which is much more common can also exceed GB under the right circumstances.
Doesn't mean it will be and it is not full-duplex.
All-in-all wired GB is still a better connect.
Moving forward at some point the LAN standard will be faster than GB and there are some 2.5GB devices and switches and 10GB has been out for awhile albeit much more expensive and usually reserved for high capacity LANS.

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:
Whether or not WiFi can keep up with a gigabit internet connection may be a moot point when you are backing up your computers to the cloud, which is dependent on your upload speed.

I don’t know how gigabit connections work, but every internet connection I’ve ever had was much slower uploading than downloading. As an example, my current connection is 400mbps download, but only 12mbps upload.

I understand what you're saying about download versus upload speeds as it used to be that way for me. Below is a screenshot I took just now. That's one of the pleasant features I enjoy right now. My upload speed is even higher than the Download speed. I don't know if it's because I have the TV on too. Best of all, no limit.

I have hard-wired my house.

I tried out a couple of wifi 6 routers.

My TV started to buffer.

I ran a cable and the buffering went away.

This is a test of a sample of one

YMMV

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:

Actually WiFi 6 802.11ax can be faster and even 802.11ac which is much more common can also exceed GB under the right circumstances.
Doesn't mean it will be and it is not full-duplex.
All-in-all wired GB is still a better connect.
Moving forward at some point the LAN standard will be faster than GB and there are some 2.5GB devices and switches and 10GB has been out for awhile albeit much more expensive and usually reserved for high capacity LANS.

Thanks for the answer: a physical connection is better. And a good reminder to me to look up the different cable speeds. At this point, I'm going to ask that Cat6 or Cat6a cables be installed.

quote:

Originally posted by sig2392:
I have hard-wired my house.

I tried out a couple of wifi 6 routers.

My TV started to buffer.

I ran a cable and the buffering went away.


This is a test of a sample of one

YMMV

That's good enough for me. Thanks for your story.

Are you renting?
When was it built? If built in the last 10-15 years and it is wired for phone they likely used Cat5 cable instead of phone line.
I swapped all the end connections on the old phone jacks to Ethernet connections and the whole house is now hardwired.

Some of the speed is throttled by the device you connect from to the router by wifi.

We have 1GB fiber, and even with wired have not seen the magic number, as you can see below it's not far off but that is wired to the Netgear Nighthawk 6 router from Costco.



Now here is the speed from my iPhone 13 Pro connected to the same router, it's still fast but not as fast as wired.



One thing about the Netgear routers if you need more than one port to connect a wired unit, IE, one printer and one desktop for example, you will need to get the one with multiple ports on the back.

Much of these new routers don't have multi port access, you'd need to buy a small switch to connect to the single port on the router, which is where I had to go...

This message has been edited. Last edited by: HRK,

WiFi these days is mostly both fast enough and reliable enough for most purposes, but for a number of reasons, the speed ratings advertised by WiFi devices are not directly comparable to ISP speed ratings or wired ethernet speed ratings.

1. ISP and wired ethernet speed numbers are in one direction. In other words, gigabit (1000 mbps) internet service gives you (in theory, approximately) 1000 mbps download speeds and also gigabit upload speeds, and gigabit ethernet also gives you both 1000 mbps in and out.

Ethernet (and I think most ISP connections) are also "full-duplex," which means they can send and receive at the same time - on gigabit wired ethernet, you can be downloading at 1000 mbps and uploading at 1000 mbps at the same time.

WiFi, on the other hand, is "half-duplex." Basically that means it can't send and receive at the same time, it has to switch back and forth really fast. So WiFi speed numbers are "total throughput" (under optimal conditions) speed numbers. If you have a gigabit WiFi connection, you get 1000 mbps TOTAL - if you're downloading at 800 mbps, you only have 200 mbps left to use for uploads. If your computer is trying to upload and download as fast as it can at the same time, you effectively get half the speed - in this example, 500 down and 500 up.

2. Your ISP speed limit applies to everything collectively (you have to split your 1000 mbps of download speed between all your devices - if your TV is using 200 mbps for Netflix and your computer is using 500 mbps downloading an OS update, there's only 300 mbps left for anything else in your house to use.

Wired ethernet doesn't quite work this way - say you have an ethernet switch with your computer, a TV, and a backup device connected to it. Your computer crashed and you're restoring it from your backup. You've got 1000 mbps going from the backup device, through the switch, to your computer. The uplink from the backup to the switch is fully saturated, and the downlink from the switch to your computer is fully saturated. Your TV can still use 200 mbps to stream Netflix. All the individual CONNECTIONS are limited to 1000 mbps, but the switch itself can handle more than that internally.

WiFi is more like your ISP connection. Under totally optimal conditions, if you have a 1000 mbps WiFi access point, all the wireless data moving in either direction to all the devices connected to the WiFi, TOTAL, is limited to 1000 mbps. In the example just above, if you get 500 mbps from the backup to the access point, and 500 mbps from the access point to your computer, that's it, that's 1000 mbps, you're done, there's no WiFi throughput left for your TV, even though nothing is using the internet connection at all.

3. Sometimes the idea of "total throughput" gets applied in unintuitive ways. A lot of 802.11ac devices get advertised as providing 1900 mbps WiFi. That's the total throughput on BOTH FREQUENCIES ADDED TOGETHER. There's a 2.4 GHz signal with 600 mbps throughput and a 5 GHz signal with 1300 mbps throughput. Any one device will only connect to ONE of those signals and will have a theoretical maximum throughput of either 600 mbps or 1300 mbps.

4. The "under optimal conditions" part of WiFi speed is no joke. If there is a wall between you and the access point, or if there are a few other access points close enough to pick up a signal from, you are not going to get the advertised maximum speed. In practice, if you are in the same room and within 10 feet of the access point, you will probably get reasonably close to the advertised maximum.

The sort of weird flip side of this is that while max speed is INCREDIBLY fragile, decent speed - say, in the range of 10-30% of the advertised max - is surprisingly robust.

5. Your actual data is not the only thing getting transmitted. On any network, data is transmitted in packets. Think of it like the mail - your actual data is what's inside the envelopes, but you also need the envelope with the address, return address, and stamp - some network data - to actually move your letter through the mail - around the network.

The advertised data transmission rates on both wired and wireless connections are NOT user data transmission rates, they are the data transmission rates for the combination of user and network data.

WiFi packets have more network data attached to them than wired ethernet packets. Mostly, this is pretty irrelevant, because most of the time, the amount of network data in a packet is still small compared to the user data inside.

However, there are some situations in which you end up with a large number of packets which have a very small amount of user data inside. In this case, the network data in the packets uses most of the actual data transmission.

This can cause a situation where sending 20mbps of a certain type of data over a WiFi connection can use 100 mbps of WiFi throughput, while it might only use 40 mbps on a wired ethernet connection (numbers are made up but possible).

But what does it all mean?

Eh, WiFi's probably fine.

In a number of ways, WiFi is more worse than wired ethernet than it looks, but it's still plenty good enough for most people for most purposes.

But also, if WiFi ISN'T good enough, even wired ethernet that looks worse might work great (e.g., there are plenty of applications where 1900 mbps WiFi would be a train wreck and gigabit (1000 mbps) ethernet is way more than you need - there are some applications where 1900 mbps WiFi would be a train wreck and old school 100mbps ethernet would be perfectly fine.).

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
Are you renting?
When was it built? If built in the last 10-15 years and it is wired for phone they likely used Cat5 cable instead of phone line.
I swapped all the end connections on the old phone jacks to Ethernet connections and the whole house is now hardwired.

I'm currently renting a small house that was built in 2020. We were the first renters. It does have the jacks in the living room and master bedroom.

We're closing escrow on a house built in 1995. I would want the cat6 cable since I'm getting gigabit internet.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
Are you renting?
When was it built? If built in the last 10-15 years and it is wired for phone they likely used Cat5 cable instead of phone line.
I swapped all the end connections on the old phone jacks to Ethernet connections and the whole house is now hardwired.

I'm currently renting a small house that was built in 2020. We were the first renters. It does have the jacks in the living room and master bedroom.

We're closing escrow on a house built in 1995. I would want the cat6 cable since I'm getting gigabit internet.

1995 unless they were on the cutting edge or did renovations since I am going to guess you are out of luck on the house being hard wired for Ethernet on any level.

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:

1995 unless they were on the cutting edge or did renovations since I am going to guess you are out of luck on the house being hard wired for Ethernet on any level.

The bathrooms and kitchen have been definitely upgraded. What makes me think there's a possibility of ethernet jacks is that there are much more electrical outlets per room than I think is normal and the kitchen drawers were upgraded to pull out drawers and the two corner cabinets to lazy susans. The walls in the garage are all peg boards so it makes me think the person who caused the upgrades was function minded.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
Some of the speed is throttled by the device you connect from to the router by wifi.

We have 1GB fiber, and even with wired have not seen the magic number, as you can see below it's not far off but that is wired to the Netgear Nighthawk 6 router from Costco.


Now here is the speed from my iPhone 13 Pro connected to the same router, it's still fast but not as fast as wired.

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/QOvvOLNm.jpg/IMG]

One thing about the Netgear routers if you need more than one port to connect a wired unit, IE, one printer and one desktop for example, you will need to get the one with multiple ports on the back.

Much of these new routers don't have multi port access, you'd need to buy a small switch to connect to the single port on the router, which is where I had to go...

Your snapshot of what I assume is your iphone speed isn't showing up. I just checked my wifi speed and it's 468 Mbps download and 300 Mbps upload. I did remember complaining that I wasn't getting anywhere near my 1 Gig speed that I was paying for in the beginning. Until at some point, I realized I needed to connect directly.

quote:

Apple’s website says iPhone 11s and later support WiFi 6 (802.11ax) with 2 MIMO spatial streams and an 80MHz wide channel for a maximum throughput of 1,200mbps.

All the same for WiFi 5 (802.11ac), but the maximum throughput drops to 866mbps.

I’m envious of the fast upload speeds you guys are getting from your ISPs.

Wi-Fi routers are not all the same either…. Unless you’re using a “smart router” the router only functions at the speed of the slowest device logged on. Therefore everything is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, regardless of it’s capability.

Although the protocol standard is changing, you can use two routers cloned as a network bridge and approach gigabyte speeds between the bridge devices. Most routers capable of bridging are fairly simple to configure in a bridge or the newer standard. This is very convenient if you want to extend your Wi-Fi range while maintaining bandwidth & signal strength.
In a typical home networking environment there isn’t any advantage to a higher CAT cable unless the downstream devices are built for that protocol.
Ethernet has it’s own operating protocol which, if not utilized accordingly, can result in suboptimal performance. I use retired Cisco switches. They are very robust and way beyond my requirements (also cheap on the used market!)
They aren’t able to take advantage of any Ethernet cable above CAT 5, and are much bigger “pipes” than I need for home .
The Covid shutdown closed my wife’s office and she has been home ever since. Her internet usage includes a voip phone, computer, teams, zoom, and all the associated software like drop box, share point, etc.
Prior to that we were running 11 devices, phones, tablets, televisions, music streaming and on and on. We’re power users!
I point this out because the infrastructure has a single access point from xfinity and everything runs from bridged routers to Cisco switches. My house isn’t wired…….

quote:

Originally posted by Oscars father:
Wi-Fi routers are not all the same either…. Unless you’re using a “smart router” the router only functions at the speed of the slowest device logged on. Therefore everything is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, regardless of it’s capability.

Care to explain your claim with some facts?

Not that there isn't some faint truth to the vague assertion is incomplete, IMO.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:

quote:

Originally posted by Oscars father:
Wi-Fi routers are not all the same either…. Unless you’re using a “smart router” the router only functions at the speed of the slowest device logged on. Therefore everything is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, regardless of it’s capability.

Care to explain your claim with some facts?

I suspect he's referring to the old 802.11b/g thing, where, if there was a mix of B and G clients, APs would slow their performance to B speeds, IIRC?