Which one is better: Wireless or LAN?

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Mr.CookieMonster

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Hi,

I have a Telkom Billion 400G ADSL Modem.

At the moment, I use my Internet via the Wi-Fi on the modem.

I would like to know which way is generally better: Wireless or using the LAN Cable? Would I get a better download speed using the cable or is it the same?

Thanks
 
lan cable is better, though wont give you better dl speeds, your not maxing your wifi with south africa adsl :P
 
wireless being half duplex will be slower than a lan cable at full duplex. wireles is also prone to interference and its speed will drop with anything other than a perfect signal.
 
Direct cable will beat wireless any day and it switches much faster
 
Doesn't matter for internet. The bottleneck is the tiny link to the Telkom exchange.

Wired wins for stability, wireless for convenience for mobile devices. So purely preference.
 
If you are usinga laptop or tablet/phone, wireless is fine. If you have a permanent desktop, it is usually cheaper to run a nice cat6 cable to the ADSL modem. That way you don't need to worry about bottlenecks when transfering files inside of your house, for example streaming an HD movie to your TV upstairs and streaming Desperate Housewives to your SO downstairs at bookclub.

Its a personal preferance really.
 
Wifi is actually ok . But for online gaming and streaming HD stuff a lan cable offers a better experience . Having said that if you have a good signal even online gaming works fine.
 
Wireless is normally 54 mbps (can go to 300 mbps) while hardwire is 100 - 1000 mbps, you will get these type of speeds internally on your lan but when using adsl you will be restricted to the speed of your connection (384, 4 mb) etc outside of your lan
 
HavocXphere said:
Doesn't matter for internet. The bottleneck is the tiny link to the Telkom exchange.

Wired wins for stability, wireless for convenience for mobile devices. So purely preference.
Click to expand...

The only correct and most intelligent answer here.
 
Thanks.

My laptop hosts all movies, music, software that I have shared for other laptops connected to stream. I have noticed some lag (on the other laptop streaming **** from my laptop).

If I bought a LAN cable, going from my computer to the Modem, and the other laptops stream via Wi-Fi, would it be better or should the whole place be a cables only network.
 
ngadao08 said:
Thanks.

My laptop hosts all movies, music, software that I have shared for other laptops connected to stream. I have noticed some lag (on the other laptop streaming **** from my laptop).

If I bought a LAN cable, going from my computer to the Modem, and the other laptops stream via Wi-Fi, would it be better or should the whole place be a cables only network.
Click to expand...

Yes.
 
HavocXphere is right. It's purely preference. Not sure about your modem/router but it's wise to have one that is capable of establishing wired and wireless connections, especially if your using an open source operating system.
 
Even with a 4MB Internet connection, would LAN still be faster than Wifi? Surely this can't be, because 4Mb is nowhere near the max for wifi?
 
Slootvreter said:
Even with a 4MB Internet connection, would LAN still be faster than Wifi? Surely this can't be, because 4Mb is nowhere near the max for wifi?
Click to expand...

My laptop hosts all movies, music, software that I have shared for other laptops connected to stream. I have noticed some lag (on the other laptop streaming **** from my laptop).
Click to expand...

If you are streaming from your laptop to other local machines, the internet connection has no bearing on the speed.

The speed will be determined by your laptop's capabilities together with the network's capabilities as well as the receiving laptop's capabilities.

Your fastest connection will occur with a 1Gb/s switch with all machines connecting at 1Gb/s full duplex.
 
bekdik said:
If you are streaming from your laptop to other local machines, the internet connection has no bearing on the speed.

The speed will be determined by your laptop's capabilities together with the network's capabilities as well as the receiving laptop's capabilities.

Your fastest connection will occur with a 1Gb/s switch with all machines connecting at 1Gb/s full duplex.
Click to expand...

I'm well aware of this. Let's put it this way. Even if I have a 4Mb Internet connection, it would not make a difference in speed whether I use LAN or Wifi, right? I'm only talking Internet downloads here.
 
Doesn't matter your internet wont be fast enough to make a difference.
 
Direct lan cable , but if you just want to browse and not really share files or stream things, wireless maybe a neater and easier option for you.
 
The last time lightning took out my ethernet card I bought a little wireless usb tongle and plugged it into my usb hub which sits about 30cm away from my wireless router.

I'm downloading at the usual 10mb and I am able to stream 720p content to my Mede8er situated about 5 metres away from the router/usb hub.

Using winSCP, data transfer between my desktop and iPhone, I'm getting around 200kBps- 2500kBps depending on the number of files, obviously small files, greater in number results in slower transfer rates but video files and pics transfer at around 2500kBps.

Transferring data from my desktop to the Mede8er via NAS runs at around 2.5mbps-3mbps...

The wireless dongle I'm using is the TP-Link 723 and I'm using a TP-Link W8960N router...

I'm very happy with the results.
 
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