… Seriously, that’s your first step. If that doesn’t work you’ve got a problem with your router.

You did not mention with which device you face this problem- Computer or Router

if its with computer, troubleshot the network adapter- simply right click networks and select troubleshoot problems

if it did not work, go to device manager- uninstall the network driver(don’t check delete device driver) and select the scan for hardware changes or just restart- issue will be solved

If issue is with router- since Ethernet out is working its safe to assume that the static IP is assigned correctly, so go to wireless settings, check the DHCP settings ,check the domain name settings, if necessary reconfigure the router, it will solve the issue.

I’m going to make an assumption here.

You’ve previously connected with your home WiFi with your laptop; now you’re getting an error message in your browser saying no internet. You click the troubleshooting button, and it gives you the message telling you that you don’t have an ethernet cable plugged in.

I occasionally get the same error. Usually rebooting my laptop fixes it. On at least one occasion, I had to plug in an ethernet cable, delete my drivers, and reinstall them. I understand it is a problem on Lenovo Flex5 laptops (which describes mine) though I remember having to redo the drivers once on my Asus.

It’s frustrating, believe me. Last time it happened, an ethernet cable wasn’t an option. I think I rebooted a half-dozen times before it started working again.

Given the issues that I’ve had with ALL of my other laptops, and this being the only issue I’ve ever had with my Lenovo, I’ve chosen to live with it. It still remains the fastest laptop I’ve ever had (I’m not into gaming, though this particular model does have the graphics card) I’m keeping it. I’ve owned Gateways, HP’s, a Surface, and that Asus.. Each had their own frustrating quirks that caused me to buy the next thing on sale at Costco (Actually, that Surface was a pretty good computer. I just didn’t like it’s inability to upgrade RAM).

So, my understanding from your question is “Why can’t I connect my WiFi Router to my Internet modem via a wireless connection?” If that is the question, then home routers are not designed to connect the Wide Area Network connection (WAN) port via WiFi. Now, should your modem contain a WiFi router internally, you might be able to use your router to “extend” that, and then it will allow Internet connections. But unless you are really in need to extend the coverage area, then you gain nothing. Just use the built in WiFi from the modem/router combination. If you just have a modem, and it has one Ethernet port, you will need to use an Ethernet cable from the modem to the WAN port on your WiFi router.

When I try to connect to my WiFi, it says I can only connect through an ethernet cable, and I can’t connect wireless to my internet. What do I do? How do I connect my internet wirelessly?

Initial Wi-Fi setup often has to be done via wired connection. There are several USB-based wired ethernet connectors available, such as EnLabs UGGIGABIT (not to shill for NewEgg, just using their site to demonstrate a product, not necessarily THE product).

You will use this session to name the Wi-Fi network, setup passwords, etc. After all, you do not want someone wirelessly connected, e.g. out in the street, to be able to configure your wireless network, do you?

Most likely you have no security set on your router and your device that is trying to connect to it is expecting some minimum level of security and it will not allow you to connect to an unsecure network. You probably have a lot of guests on your WiFi that you are not aware of too. Someone could have been nice enough to give you all kinds of presents in the form of malware and virus and zombie programs just because they like you so much. If they did that then you may not be able to login to your router because they changed the admin password. If that is the case you need to do a hard factory reset on the router. There should be a sequence in the owner’s manual.

Sounds like you either don’t have Wi-Fi setup properly or windows dropped the ball (common issue). Does your phone connect via Wi-Fi or is it getting the same message. Are you able to see the SSID? Can you log into the router and check the settings? You could have issues with the Wi-Fi card. Make sure it is turned on and enabled in the BIOS/Device Manager. Are you getting the message that “Internet Not Available”? Does it affect everyone or just your PC? Have you tried resetting the router to factory, any messages of lack of internet? Sometimes just rebooting the router and PC will resolve it. Delete the Wi-Fi profile and reconnect again.

If you want to connect your computer to the internet through Ethernet than you would need an Ethernet cable. Follow these steps and you will be able to do it.

• Acquire an Ethernet cable

Ethernet cables, also known as RJ-45, CAT5, or CAT6 cables, have a square plug on each end. You'll use an Ethernet cable to connect your computer to your router.

• Make sure your router is online

Your router should be connected to a Cable or Ethernet port in your wall, and you should see a constant light on the front of the router.

• Locate Ethernet ports on your computer and router and plug your Ethernet cable

Ethernet ports are square, and they usually have an icon depicting a series of connected boxes near them.

On your router, Ethernet ports will typically say "LAN" (Local Area Network) above them.

As long as your router is online, doing so will connect your computer to the Internet almost immediately.

Configuring Ethernet Settings on Windows

• Open the Start menu

To do so, either click the Windows logo in the bottom-left corner of the screen or press the Win key from your Keyboard.

• Click the Settings icon

The Settings icon is on the bottom-left side of the Start window.

• Click Network & Internet

It's in the top row of options here.

• Click Ethernet

This option is on the left side of the window

• Verify that the Ethernet is working

You should see your Internet's network name at the top of this page with "Connected" written below it; this indicates that your Ethernet connection is live.

Note: If your Ethernet isn't working, try using a different port on the router or a different Ethernet cable or else contact your ISP.

There are a few possibilities.

First, check whether the PC can access the router configuration settings. If it cannot, then:

1. The router may have MAC address filtering configured to block the PC.
2. The PC may have static address settings that are incompatible with the router’s private subnet. If you have set up static addresses on WiFi to get it to work with a different WiFi network, then these settings may not be valid on your network. This is a design problem in Windows where address settings are associated with the network adapter. In Android, address settings are associated with the specific WiFi network so you can static addressing on one WiFi network and automatic (DHCP) addressing on another network.
3. There are compatibility issues between certain routers and certain specific client WiFi network adapters. My experience on my networks and those of family and friends suggests this might affect perhaps 5% of such router/client pairings. Sometimes a connection simply cannot be set up. In other cases the connection may be unstable or slow. I suspect that many people may suffer a connection that is somewhat slower than it should be but do not realise there is a problem. Sometimes a client will establish a low level WiFi connection and indicate it is connected, but fail to get its address settings using DHCP. If this is happening your PC will probably have an IP address beginning 169.254…

You will have to check just what addresses are involved. If you can connect to the router but not to the Internet, then check that the gateway and DNS addresses are valid. For most home networks, these will be the address of the router on the private network. The gateway and DNS addresses for Ethernet and WiFi should be the same.

Multiple causes could be affecting it possible dust in the LAN ports a faulty ethernet cable or a configuration problem with the Ethernet adapter make sure these are set to automatic.

Compared to a wired connection between router and client :

The first image may be nicer to look at, colorful and such.
I see distortion. Everywhere.
Within your home, it looks the same and everything is in the way of the connection.
Furniture, walls, doors, the cat, the dog, your wife or husband or kids.
More so, electrical devices, not to speak of microwave ovens .. it all distorts.

In a long past, I had a Commodore 64, an 8 bit home computer in 1985.
Its storage device was a cassette tape.

Loading my then favorite game ‘Decision in the Desert’ took about 27 minutes to load.
Anxiously waiting for it to finish, so I could start gaming.
26 Minutes in, my mother would start a kitchen machine………………………………………….

Load error
Rewind tape and try again.

Everyone using a computer in those days, knows the feeling.
Stuff didn’t load in seconds, it was half an hour.
And distortion was really ruining it
And guess what, it still does.

Have a look at this :

And my neighborhood :

These are neighbors, the people living in this street or perhaps the one behind my home, they all use the same radio space as I am.
There are a few different channels with corresponding radio frequencies but there is a lot of overlap.
Any frequency being used by 10 routers, all within about 100 meters.
It causes distortion.

Networks work as follow :
Client sents signal to router and waits for a response.
The router didn’t get the signal cause it was distorted.
After time passed, the client sends the same signal again and waits
Eventually the router will pick it up and responds ACK(nowledged)
When the client doesn’t pick it up, cause distortion, the router will sent it again.
And this goes on continuously not just on your home network, also on the wider internet.
Any connection works as such.
Devices talk to each-other.

Download from server to your computer :
Server sends package.
Client sends back, [received, send the next]
Server sends package.
Client sends back, [received, send the next]

Etcetera

Now fill in distortion due to wireless connection on your end.
That slows down your internet or network.

Do you want to punch through that distortion ?
Use a cable.

In addition to Joe Herman’s answer, many desktop machines do not come with WiFi cards at all, since their use case is expected to be non-mobile. In this use case the assumption is that the inconvenience of running the wire once is outweighed by the greater reliability and bandwidth of a wired connection. The ubiquity of WiFi, and the possibility that you may be using it as your sole connection to the internet (especially in urban cores with municipal WiFi) is slowly changing this assumption, so there are some consumer desktop machines that now come native with WiFi. In my brief survey this still seems to be the expectoration to the rule though, at least for now. The consumer desktop market (as opposed to the business and high end desktop market) always seems to lag behind current trends, since they are usually designed a budget items (they are more cost effective performance wise than an equivalent laptop).

The question is lacking in details, so this answer may not be applicable.

A PC won’t be able to connect to WiFi for the following reasons

1. There is no wifi signal where the PC is
2. The Wifi card in the PC only supports older version of wifi such as 802.11.b or 802.11g and the wifi network is configured to only allow newer versions 802.11n or 802.11ac
3. The wifi is configured with security that is not supported by the PC, either because the security certificates aren’t installed or the supplied password is incorrect. Or the security is configured incorrectly on the PC, so it’s using the wrong security protocol (WPA2 vs. WEP)
4. The wireless router is configured to hide the network name (SSID) which must be manually entered into the PC network configuration

Because anyone in range can connect to a wireless network, security is a much greater concern. Many places rely on physical access security to the Ethernet port, so that if you can physically connect to the Ethernet port, you’re trusted enough to access the network.

It probably means your Ethernet port is not working.

One of my clients had this same problem recently. But it was even weirder. Her laptop worked wired at one of her clients but not at home.

The issue was she didn’t have working Ethernet when the laptop was at home but she did when at the client.

Her laptop doesn’t have an Ethernet port. And, like some recent Macbooks, it tries to do everything via a USB-C port - including charging.

Her configuration at home had the laptop charging but not a functional USB to Ethernet connection. When at her client she was running on battery with her USB-C to Ethernet adapter working just fine.

The fix was to get a better “dock” at home that would plug the laptop USB-C and have a power brick to power the dock and the laptop. Ideally, this “dock” would have an Ethernet port on it along with HDMI and at least one USB-A connector for as keyboard and mouse.

I think the whole USB-C only thing is very stupid.

That said, I was surprised that my current Dell Precision 5510 (bought refurbished from Discount Electronics in Austin) has a bunch of ports but NOT an Ethernet port. I am using a USB-C to Ethernet adapter with it.

I bought three of these adapters so I could keep them around at various places and be sure I always could use Ethernet when it was available. Three USB-C to Gigabit Ethernet adapters only cost me a total of $55.47 including tax from Amazon and they all work.

Most likely your router is not handing out required information to your computer that enables the network card to connect to it and the internet.

To give a better suggestion, access to the inner workings of your router is needed. And that is something you should never allow to anyone, who is not standing beside you without a laptop and a UTP cable next to your router.

A person with a bit of network knowledge can then clearly identify what is the problem and fix it. Possible that person is able to explain to you what they did, so you might be able to solve your own future problem. Or at least give better error descriptions , so better, more specific advise can be given.

It is possible the router is giving no information to your computer.
It is possible your router gives false information to your computer.
It is possible the UTP cable in your house is broken.
It is possible the UTP cable in your house is too close to a source of interference.

The actual cause is easy to spot with a laptop, a known good UTP cable and a bit of network knowledge.

It’s not necessarily “normal,” but it can happen due to various factors. Ethernet connections typically offer faster and more stable speeds compared to Wi-Fi because they involve a direct physical connection to your router or modem. However, several factors could cause slower speeds on Ethernet:

1> Cable Quality: The Ethernet cable itself might be of lower quality or damaged, leading to reduced speeds. Cat5e or Cat6 cables are generally recommended for higher speeds.

2> Port or Adapter Issues: The Ethernet port on your device or the router could have a problem, or the Ethernet adapter might be outdated.

3> Router Configuration: There could be configurations or settings on your router affecting Ethernet speeds. For example, QoS (Quality of Service) settings might prioritize Wi-Fi traffic over Ethernet.

4> Device Limitations: Your device’s hardware might not be capable of utilizing the full potential of the Ethernet connection.

5> Network Configuration: There could be network congestion or other issues within your local network affecting Ethernet speeds.

It’s worth troubleshooting these factors to identify the cause of the slower speeds. Try using different Ethernet cables, testing the connection with other devices, checking router settings, and ensuring that your device’s Ethernet drivers are up to date. If the issue persists, contacting your Internet service provider or seeking professional assistance might be necessary.

It’s not necessarily normal for an Ethernet connection to be consistently slower than a Wi-Fi connection, especially when there are no other users on the Wi-Fi network. There could be a few reasons for this:

1> Hardware Issues: It’s possible there’s an issue with your Ethernet cable, port, or network adapter. Check if the cable is damaged or if the port on your computer or router is functioning properly.

2> Network Configuration: There could be configuration issues with your Ethernet connection, such as incorrect settings or limited bandwidth allocation.

3> Router Configuration: Your router might prioritize Wi-Fi traffic over Ethernet, or there could be QoS (Quality of Service) settings that are affecting the Ethernet connection.

4> Software or Drivers: Outdated or malfunctioning network drivers or software could be causing the slowdown. Make sure your drivers are up to date.

5> Network Congestion: Even if there are no other users on the Wi-Fi network, there could be other devices or processes on the local network consuming bandwidth, affecting both Ethernet and Wi-Fi.

6> ISP or Router Limitations: Your internet service provider (ISP) might impose limitations on Ethernet connections or your router might have limitations on wired connections.

If you’ve ruled out these possibilities and are still experiencing slower speeds on Ethernet, it might be worth contacting your ISP or a network technician for further assistance.

Answered as: Which internet connection is better Wi-Fi or Ethernet and why?

The short answer is a hardware ethernet is almost always better, although it means you have to be tethered. If you can work with the tether, it is going to give you a better experience.

For the longer answer, I will refer back and quote the inventor of Ethernet, Bob Metcalfe. On the day Apple announced the Newton, I had asked Bob to give the keynote at the first conference in Mobile computing (USENIX Mobile 1 - in the early 1980s). Bob’s observation is that “being mobile is handy and when I really care about it, I want it. It's like a port-a-potty. Nothing can replace it when I value it. But most of the time I don’t want to use it because there is just not enough Ether.”

So let’s look at what he means when he says there is “not enough Ether.”

The first part is somewhat obvious, bandwidth. Don’t get me wrong, WiFi speeds are getting better and better; but for shorter and shorter distances and you have to control a great deal. With a hunk of copper or fiber ‘pipe’ it is a lot easier to go faster, and you see speeds of 100G today (when Bob made is observation, what would later be called WiFi (developed by NCR/DEC/AT&T — called ‘roam-about’) was not even running at 1M and Ethernet had just broken 100M).

Plus the open air is a shared media. Try running WiFi in your apt in NYC these days. You’ll notice the train wreck in the 2.5GHZ band from you and all your neighbors and local businesses. Yeech, I’d rather just run a wire (I have, many of them) and it’s (they are) 100% mine!

The second part is reliability and its cousin, security. Since the signal is over the air, it is a lot easier for cross-talk and other things to degrade the signal. Or it's pretty easy for anyone to listen to what is being broadcast.

Simply put, WiFi over the air shared with everyone, so that means interference, latency and a sack of issues which just are not present when you funnel the data signal over a private ‘pipe.’

2023/01/23 - fixed a nasty typo.

WiFI is just Ethernet using radio waves instead of cables. Your computer and your WiFi router probably have rj45 ports. All you need to do is get a cable long enough to reach between them. Wired connections using “twisted pair” cat[egory] 5 or cat 6 Ethernet cables can be 100 meters long… much more than you need unless you plan to run a wire out the window to your neighbor’s house…

As for “fixing”, there is nothing to fix. Make sure your LAN port allows the router to give it an IP address, just like it does when you are on WiFi.

You CAN’T have the WiFi on at the same time, however. That would cause a loop in the network.. so turn the WiFi off either at the computer or at the router

If you can use a wired ethernet connection, then do so.

• No random drops when you use your microwave, cell phone, baby monitor, or garage door opener
• No distance from WiFi AP problems for your smart TV
• Random people driving by with their WiFi turned on on their cell phone won’t be connecting to your wired ethernet, they will if you have Comcast or some other WiFi which treats your cable modem/router/AP as a public access point
• If your neighbors want to leech your Internet service off you, they will have to break into your house to hook up the cable
• The connection will be uniform
• The connection will typically be faster

I have a patch panel, which means I can designate a particular port as a phone line, wired ethernet, etc.. With the right dongle, I can even distribute HDMI for TV:

“That’s not a phone line or wired ethernet; that’s HDMI that looks like a phone line or ethernet”.

Thank you, Mr. patch panel.

You can certainly use WiFi only. You can do whatever you want. This is America dammit!

Of course, wired ethernet is faster than WiFi ethernet. Wired goes in both directions at the same time; WiFi is one-way and must switch directions. WiFi speed is limited by the Federal Communications Commission, wired is limited by physics and the speed of light.
Wired ethernet is more secure from hacking. To hack wired ethernet, you have to physically connect to the wiring. To hack WiFi, you can be parked at McD’s across the street.
Wired ethernet is more stable. WiFi can be interrupted by the microwave oven, electrical interference, etc.

The fundamental reason is that an Ethernet cable has greater bandwidth. The bandwidth of an Ethernet cable is about 350 MHz. Each WiFi channel has a bandwidth of 20 MHz. WiFi 5 (802.11 ac) allows binding 4 channels together to get one wide-band virtual channel of 80 MHz. WiFi 6 allows binding 8 WiFi channels together and can get a peak data rate of around 900 Mbps — almost a gigabit, the same as an Ethernet cable.

That makes it sound that WiFi 6 can be almost as fast as Ethernet, but it’s not true. The first reason is that Ethernet cable is full duplex. Devices can send and receive simultaneously. WiFi can have only one packet in a radio channel at a time. If two packets collide, both must be retransmitted. Eventually retransmitted packets start interfering with new packets. You get a packet traffic jam that can bring the network to a halt for a minute or so, until things clear out. This is call channel saturation.

Channel saturation is made worse by your neighbors. If they are on the same channel as you, their packets can interfere with yours. There are 9 channels in the 5 GHz WiFi band. When both you and your neighbors are binding 8 channels together, you will all be on the same virtual channel.

There are other reasons that WiFi is slower. They are harder to explain but they have their effect. When many people are using WiFi at the same time, the aggregate data throughput is about half the peak data rate.

WiFi 6 and future technologies might make WiFi even faster. In the mean time, Cat 5e Ethernet cable already supports 2.5 Gbps. (Although that standard is not very popular yet.) Cat 6a supports 10 Gbps. And Ethernet cable can be over 300 feet long, which is much further than WiFi range.

Tuning wifi in an apartment is almost always a huge hassle. There are going to be several components at play that are all chipping away at your usable bandwidth on any single connected device.

First, let’s take a quick look at the IEEE wireless standards, and their maximum rated transmission speeds.

802.11a - 54 Mb/sec
802.11b - 11 Mb/sec
802.11g - 54 Mb/sec
802.11n - 600 Mb/sec
802.11ac - 433 Mb/sec ( sometimes advertised at 1,300 Mb/sec because ac has the ability to provide 3 simultaneous connections at 433 Mb/sec per connection)

Immediately you can cut each of these numbers in half, regardless of the internet connection speed provided by your ISP. With wired ethernet (using cat5 or 6 cables) the computer and router can both send and receive data at the same time, referred to as full-duplex. Wifi transmission occurs using half-duplex. The computer and router can only send or receive at one time.

So, for example, the advertised 54 Mb/sec connection on an 802.11g connection is actually going to be closer to 27 Mb/sec because the router (and your computer) is not able to receive data while it is sending data. This also means that for every additional device that is communicating on that network, the bandwidth to/from the router is further limited. This quickly adds up, and can severely limit actual connection speeds.

Also major problem with these advertised connection speeds, and maximum transmission distances, is that they are measured under ideal conditions in a lab environment. This means a big empty room with absolutely no interference. No interior walls, no other wireless signals, no electronics, nothing deflecting wireless signals or creating competing radio noise. In reality, everything from drywall, to electrical wiring, appliances, hvac ducts, will all play a role in chipping away at your connection speed.

As for the number of networks in/around your home. Having multiple segmented networks on the router shouldn’t create too much of an issue, it will more be an issue of how many devices are connecting to them. Having a ton of neighboring wifi networks can, however, cause problems. If these wireless networks are running on channels that overlap with yours, it will noticeably slow your transmission speed because of interference. If you have no control over your router’s config, unfortunately, there isn’t much that can be done. In a perfect world, people would pay attention to the channels they use when configuring their wifi, and also limit the antenna power on their router to reduce signal overlap.

Sorry for the brevity toward the end. I would’ve loved to go more in-depth on these topics, but I know if I do that, I’ll have to save my answer, and probably never end up submitting it. Hope this was helpful!

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link….Meaning in this case that anything along the way can slow the process down…and that will then be your internet speed.

So what could be slowing down the process?

1. Internal processes on your pc which affect speed….That could be a big update downloading to the hard drive…It could be a stuck process on a browser anything.
2. The same can be said for any router before or after the WiFi along the way…. Miscellaeous processes you cant see can affect things.
3. Location location location….you might be in a deadzone for the wifi…This could be caused by a thick metal wrapped wall…or simply the engineering of the antenna.
4. Sharing…you may be sharing wifi with someone…or the network after the wifi….And then you need to wait in line to move your data.
5. There could also be heat or cold problems…Processors have specific temperatures they like to work within…So being too hot or too cold could affect them…so could humidity.
6. Even something as stupid as a bad cable location could affect things. As an example….interference can make a cable not work well or at all…So if there was something creating interference near an unshielded cable…like an electric motor that could theoretically affect the speed of the cable leading from the wifi.

There really are an infinite number of scenarios which would cause sporadic speed changes in a network line.

Yes.

The numbers advertised by WiFi are not exactly compatible to Ethernet.

1. WiFi is half-duplex: the client can send or receive at a time. Ethernet is full-duplex and can do both simultaneously.
2. WiFi is shared. The base jumps from client to client. Ethernet is point-to-point so the client gets the full negotiated bandwidth.
3. WiFi is more susceptible to interference so packets need to be resent.
4. WiFi advertised speeds are theoretical and achievable only in controlled settings. Expect real-world negotiated throughput to be less than 80% of those.

That's the brief summary. WiFi is advancing to mitigate some of these issues. For example, MU-MIMO improves communication to multiple devices.

The main reason is “contention” i.e. everybody trying to use the same thing at once, and the second is the speed of the interfaces. Let me explain further:

Let’s talk about contention first.

Wired Ethernet has evolved to allow multiple devices, connected by a switch, to send and receive frames simultaneously at what is called “line rate”, i.e. the maximum speed of the interface, in both directions. This is called DUPLEX and is like a two-way road where cars can go in both directions at once. We can do this because each wire has its own little self contained electric environment due to the way the wires are arranged and they electrically connect to each other via a switch, that does some other useful stuff to improve throughput as well, that I’ll discuss next.

Wi-Fi, on the other hand, uses radio waves and has to use SPACE as its environment. And that is a whole different story. Because:

1. The radio bands that Wi-Fi uses are for public use and can be used by a bunch of other equipment, including microwave ovens and DECT cordless phones.
2. Everybody using Wi-Fi has to use the same radio bands so they get pretty crowded. This includes your neighbors’ Wi-Fi (which, unless you live in the countryside, is likely to be lots of neighbors’ Wi-Fi) . At my place I can see a couple of dozen Wi-Fi networks. This introduces interference, which makes the signals more likely to be corrupted.
3. This also applies to other devices on your own home network; they all have to share the same radio bands. Wi-Fi has to use a technique called SIMPLEX, which is like an intersection of many single-lane roads with traffic lights to determine who gets to go next. On each network (SSID) all the devices have to agree to take turns in speaking (using a protocol called CSMA-CA
   [1]
   ), which slows things down a lot if you have more than one device - most of us have at least half a dozen once you take into account phones, tables, computers, game consoles, fridges, cameras, etc.

So contention for this radio resource is the main reason that things get slowed down. There are some other reasons like having to pause before sending the frame that are defined in the Wi-Fi standards and that introduces “latency” (delay) which slows things down even more. This is the price we pay for not having a wire to worry about.

Next let’s talk about speed.

Wired Ethernet has a very well defined speed that is maintained up until the limit of the length of wire allowed is reached; it’s about 100m of cable, which is a pretty long way. The way the Ethernet wiring works is that any interference in the environment that might effect the electrical signals is balanced out and can be taken into account. If you’re in a really electrically noisy environment, you can use “shielded” Ethernet cables. For simplicity let’s say that you can rely on the speed of Ethernet up to 100m away, and that speed is fixed. Also Ethernet switches buffer and clean up signals so the throughout can be pretty close to the maximum, up to the limit of the switch’s capacity.

Wi-Fi, because of the nature of radio signals, follows an inverse cube law, which means that received power falls away VERY rapidly with distance away from the transmitters (the router and the Wi-Fi enabled devices). The throughput is designed to reduce the further you are away from the router in well defined steps to ensure that even though you get a lower speed, you’ll still be able to decode the frames when they arrive. So if you are right next to the router, you are likely to get the maximum throughput possible, but it falls way very quickly.

Footnotes