Why is my wifi speed slower than ethernet connection?
Purely anecdotal, but if you’re running an old Linksys WRT54G, I saw a significant speed increase and a much more stable connection once I replaced the built in Linksys firmware with DD-WRT. It’s an alternative firmware with a pretty slick GUI and a bunch of added features, like the ability to boost your routers radio output far beyond the default and to use your router as a commercial hotspot. There’s also the open source project OpenWRT. It’s extremely robust and extensible but a lot less user friendly…basically a Linux distribution for the router. I’ve been told by friends that they’ve also seen performance increases after flashing their routers with that one. You’ll just need to be more comfortable with the command line interface. > You may not be using a Linksys but I figured they’re so common I’d take a guess.
Yes, A typical wired ethernet connection will be 100mbps (the small b is for bits) which comes out to about 12.5mBps (Big B for Bytes). That’s at 100% efficiency, without overhead. The fastest wireless is 802.11g which is a 54mbps (small b again) connection, which is 6.75mBps. Once again that doesn’t factor in overhead, which there is quite a bit of in the wireless protocol. If it’s 802.11b, which only runs at 11mbps (1.37mBps) the throughput is of course lower. The main point though is that even assuming maximum wireless signal strength, wireless contains more overhead data to be transmitted along with the actual data.
