In this video, I detail a few reasons why your WiFi speed might be faster than the ethernet speed of a device in your home network.
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0:00 Introduction
0:37 My experience with WiFi and ethernet speeds
1:42 What you can look at to troubleshoot why your ethernet speed is slower than WiFi
5:29 Does it matter if your ethernet speed is slower than WiFi?
6:32 Summary and conclusion
What to do if a device’s ethernet speed is slower than its WiFi speed
It’s well documented that the ethernet speed of a device should be faster than its WiFi speed.
So what should you do if that’s not the case?
The good news is, there are a few different things you can look at. You can look at:
The ethernet cable used in the wired speed test: you should be using an ethernet cable that’s a Cat5e cable or higher. Cat5e ethernet cables support bandwidth of up to 1 Gbps, so if you’re using this type of cable (or higher), you know it’s not slowing down the internet speed of your device.
The device has ethernet ports rated for speeds up to 1,000 Mbps: as I found out on my device, my laptop only has an ethernet port rated for speeds up to 100 Mbps. As a result, I shouldn’t expect an ethernet connection speed test to result in speeds faster than 100 Mbps (like my WiFi speed tests).
If your device has ethernet ports rated for 1,000 Mbps, make sure the speed and duplex setting is set to “Auto Negotiation”: if you have an ethernet port that has a speed and duplex setting configured to “100 Mbps full duplex”, it will limit ethernet speeds to 100 Mbps or less.
Assuming you have 1,000 Mbps ethernet ports, you’re using a Cat5e ethernet cable (or above), and your ethernet port is set to “Auto Negotiation”, you should be seeing ethernet speeds faster than WiFi speeds for the device.
Conclusion
If you have any questions about why a device might have slower ethernet speeds than WiFi speeds, please leave a comment below.