Are Ethernet connections even necessary anymore?

[William Gaatjes]

Ok, it shows 54Mbps for me. If Netflix 4K is using 16.7 Mbps of that, I definitely won't have an over saturation issue with what else I do.

If you say so. What Ichinisan has written makes sense to me. If saturation does not happen, you have no worries.

 

[Lean L]

I am streaming 4K Netflix fine over Wi-Fi. On my computers I get a low ping, and the rated download and upload speeds over Wi-Fi.

If you only have one device and absolutely no other interference on the wifi band then sure...

Let's say you live in an apt in NY or something where there are 40 other APs in the area and you have two roommates. There is a NAS on the network that all of you can stream off of. A single stream will saturate wifi...

1Gb is standard nowadays. That is full duplex... 2Gb when you count both directions per device. Compare that to ~100Mb/s single duplex for all devices for the best case scenario for wifi. There is no comparison. factor in the interference from the other networks, once the anti collision algorithms kick in on the router, you're increasing your latency and lowering your throughput.

 

[slag]

4k video only needs Fast Ethernet. Welcome to 1995.

yeah, no. no one had 15 mb/s internet in 1995. The college I attended didn't even have a T1.

 

[Gillbot]

Yes.

The only time I use WiFi is for devices (phones, tablets, etc.) that can't take Ethernet. Wired is always better than wireless, performance wise.

This

 

[Kaido]

True story:

My buddy worked in IT for a small company back the early 2000's, when WiFi first became a word. So the CIO heard about it and said something to this effect: "WiFi is the way of the future! I want all our servers converted to WiFi." The IT crowd protested and tried to fight it, but they did not win. My buddy quit.

Had a similar thing happen at one job maybe five years ago. Big boss loved the concept of wireless in the factory & hated wires hanging down (even though power lines & air hoses still needed to be run vertically...). End result was horrible horribleness. Eventually he was booted from the company & we ran about 2,000 feet of Ethernet within a week of his departure :biggrin:

 

[Kaido]

My Ethernet devices never require me to update the wireless password. I change the wireless password every month or two and SSID's annually and it's such a pain to go around & change all of the random stuff I have if everything's on wifi. Especially the stuff like TV players like Roku where you have a remote control for input instead of a keyboard.

 

[child of wonder]

WiFi is for pussies. I'm wiring my house with 40Gb active optical cable so I'll be ready when 1600k video arrives.

Seriously, WiFi is unreliable, prone to tons of interference, and just overall sucks. Give me a hardline any day if I need to actually stream something. I don't want to have to worry about whether my neighbor turns on their baby monitor or the metal duct work in my walls comprising the wireless signal and interrupting my 4k porn stream.

 

[HeXen]

^that likely just depends on where you live.

 

[postmortemIA]

On my tablet, i press wifi settings. Then i click on the wifi network that i am connected too and it shows status, signal strength (In words like awful, worse, bad, good and excellent), the link speed, security used and IP address. It is a feature of android 4. Link speed is 54Mbps. It can be as low as 1Mbps when interfering occurs.

That is speed of the protocol, not sustained speed. Since 11g is half duplex, your max sustained download speed is half of that. After overhead loss, it comes to 22mbps.

 

[Lean L]

That is speed of the protocol, not sustained speed. Since 11g is half duplex, your max sustained download speed is half of that. After overhead loss, it comes to 22mbps.

It's not automatically half'd. If there is very little upload and mostly download half duplex can still mean ~44mbps using your example.

Wanted to point that out before some wifi advocate comes along and tries to contradict the half duplex theory.

 

[Ichinisan]

On another level: If one device on WiFi has a weak signal, the WiFi networks can remodulate the signal for the entire network to a modulation scheme with much lower throughput (but better tolerance for a weak signal).

So your family member might be outside mowing grass, not even using the WiFi -- but because the phone in his/her pocket is maintaining a WiFi connection, your network remodulates to a much lower bit rate just to allow that device to stay connected more reliably. Then it impacts the performance of all the devices on your network in that frequency band. This might not happen as much with high-end MIMO stuff, but there's still an impact on the rest of your network. There would be fewer MIMO antennas / channels to go around for the devices in the home. Also, not all WiFi devices support MIMO. Even those that do will implement it differently.

 

[Engineer]

Yes.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

If you live in a high density location, like a city, the 2.4ghz wifi spectrum is all but useless, making older devices nasty to use.

Everything I can wire is wired, with the exception of the bedroom pc (5ghz) and laptops/tablets (5ghz)

 

[lxskllr]

Seriously, WiFi is unreliable, prone to tons of interference, and just overall sucks. Give me a hardline any day if I need to actually stream something. I don't want to have to worry about whether my neighbor turns on their baby monitor or the metal duct work in my walls comprising the wireless signal and interrupting my 4k porn stream.

Pretty much. Wifi is nice when you want a connection quick, but I wouldn't want to rely on it as my primary connection.

 

[mrrman]

prefer hard wired at home any day over WIFI

 

[Gillbot]

WiFi is for pussies. I'm wiring my house with 40Gb active optical cable so I'll be ready when 1600k video arrives.

Seriously, WiFi is unreliable, prone to tons of interference, and just overall sucks. Give me a hardline any day if I need to actually stream something. I don't want to have to worry about whether my neighbor turns on their baby monitor or the metal duct work in my walls comprising the wireless signal and interrupting my 4k porn stream.

My old house I had fiber running from one end to the other. All gigabit copper from there.

 

[Eug]

If it says 54 Mbps, the real world speed is probably not 54 Mbps. Furthermore speeds will fluctuate and sometimes will drop through the floor when there is interference such as from a microwave oven or neighbouring wireless networks.

If you want to guarantee smooth high bitrate streaming, wired Ethernet is always the best way to go. The whole point of wireless is for convenience and mobility. Stability and reliability comes second.

For the record, I have wired gigabit ethernet covering almost all of my house, but I also have wireless 802.11ac also covering almost all of my house. Why get just one or the other? Get both, and get the best of both worlds.

 

[MrPickins]

yeah, no. no one had 15 mb/s internet in 1995. The college I attended didn't even have a T1.

I'm pretty sure Eug meant Fast Ethernet (100BaseT) with the "welcome to 1995" comment.

 

[ch33zw1z]

For me, wired is for anything I want to rely on. Netflix, Plex, etc..

Wireless for surfing and checking email.

 

[OutHouse]

True story:

My buddy worked in IT for a small company back the early 2000's, when WiFi first became a word. So the CIO heard about it and said something to this effect: "WiFi is the way of the future! I want all our servers converted to WiFi." The IT crowd protested and tried to fight it, but they did not win. My buddy quit.

Yea I've heard of this. Most CIO's are so out of touch with reality

 

[SparkyJJO]

Wired for stuff that doesn't move whenever possible (desktop PCs, TV boxes, etc). Just more reliable that way.

Wifi for mobile devices, or for those you can't easily get a wired connection to.

Wifi may cut it fine for most things when you don't have many other wifi networks around to create noise (like where I live now, or at my brother's house) though I still hardwire my stuff when I can), but if there are a lot around (apartment complexes, high density residential stuff) then good luck with that. At least in high density environments you won't be going over a long distance.

 

[mnewsham]

I am an entire floor away from my router, so I have my room wired with an 8 port switch for all my wired devices. I can connect to the router from up here with wifi just fine, the problem is the speeds are about 1/3 of what I get over ethernet.

Over ethernet:
Ping 11ms
84Mbps Download
93Mbps Upload

Over wifi:
Ping 22ms
25Mbps Download
55Mbps Upload

 

[techie81]

Personally I save wifi for a few devices that absolutely need it otherwise I use Ethernet or powerline adapters.

 

[mmntech]

So you're highly compressed 4K streams impress you enough to think ethernet is done for?

Depends on what type of compression they're using. I've gotten impressive results HEVC/h.265 with my DVDs. Gotten 1GB files under 200mb and they damn near look identical. Unfortunately, HD encoding just brings my computer to it's knees. No GPGPU acceleration yet for that format.

The main advantages Ethernet now are lower latency, better security, and less interference. It can make a big difference in large office environments, competitive online gaming, or real time streaming. For home use, WiFi is fine provided you aren't one of the lucky few that has gigabit internet.

 

[Grooveriding]

Joke post ?

GL streaming uncompressed Blu-Ray off a NAS over wireless with your HTPC.