While having my lunch today I was surfing the net on my iPhone and came across this article about wireless internet being much slower than wired. See below
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12688839
This article states that broadband can be 30% slower on wireless than by using a wired connection. I thought I would put this to the test in the office using nothing more than my laptop and an Ethernet cable.
The plan was simple, use speedtest.net to test the download speed on a wireless connection and then do the same with a wired connection. I would do this 5 times swapping from one to another to get a nice sample size and work out the average.
We are on virgin’s super 50Mb broadband so the result was interesting. See the results below:
Wireless Tests
TEST 1 : 12.15 Mbps
TEST 2 : 17.46 Mbps
TEST 3 : 19.04 Mbps
TEST 4 : 18.74 Mbps
TEST 5 : 18.18 Mbps
AVERAGE : 17.114Mbps
Wired Tests
TEST 1 : 53.90 Mbps
TEST 2 : 52.10 Mbps
TEST 3 : 36.33 Mbps
TEST 4 : 40.36 Mbps
TEST 5 : 52.11 Mbps
AVERAGE : 46.96 Mbps
I was shocked when I saw these results! On wireless the broadband lost 64% of the speed on a wired connection. The laptop had full signal strength and stating it was working at 54Mbps. See below.
We have a good wireless setup in the office and don’t really notice the drop in speed on wireless, but many wireless connections are terrible and this can be resolved by simply changing the wireless channel on your router or by changing the router itself. If you are having problem with your wireless internet then give your local PC PAL Engineer a call.
