what is better wifi vs ethernet

[jarredfeutrill2000]

I have an Xbox 360 what would be better power line adapter with Ethernet or just Xbox 360 WiFi. I am with Telstra on Fixed Wireless.

[Coolmaster]

Ethernet is better if it's available.

[Stahlmann]

In most cases, ethernet is better.

 

But with powerline there are a few factors that could negatively affect the ethernet experience. If you live in an old house with bad wiring, the powerline could be worse than wifi.

[jarredfeutrill2000]

Just now, Stahlmann said:

In most cases, ethernet is better.

 

But with powerline there are a few factors that could negatively affect the ethernet experience. If you live in an old house with bad wiring, the powerline could be worse than wifi.

my house was made in 2006 the wiring should be fine.

[Stahlmann]

Just now, jarredfeutrill2000 said:

my house was made in 2006 the wiring should be fine.

Then the powerline ethernet should be better then wifi.

[B16CXHatch]

It all depends on where you plug the adapters in really. Remember, the way powerline adapters work is similar to WiFi (mine even use MU-MIMO), just over powerlines instead of air. It's a combo of the wiring, sockets, which circuits they're plugged into, the amount of wire the signal has to go through, and the quality of the adapters themselves. Ideally, you want them on the same circuit. And if they are on different circuits, you want to have as little wire between the adapters and the breakers as possible. They also need to be plugged into the wall directly. No surge protectors, UPSs or power strips.

 

A good example is my own house. The modem and router are in a room upstairs with one powerline adapter. I have another powerline adapter downstairs in the den with a PC and an access point connected to it. That PC and any WiFi device with good enough WiFi on 5GHz (like my phone or tablet), can easily max out my 200Mbps Down, 20 Up internet on SpeedTest with a latency of 10-11ms on my usual test server. That's only slightly off from what my main PC and HTPC upstairs test at (8-9ms). However, the next room over, I wanted to put my NAS in on another powerline adapter. Literally the next room and terrible performance. It connected, and my computers could see the NAS, but the connection was so slow and unstable, that it was unusable. I had to figure out somewhere else to put the NAS (trying to put it somewhere out of the way where no one can here it). It's probably going in the basement since sockets down there will be closest to the breaker box. The only free one is broken though, so I'll need to replace that socket first.

 

And by the way, the age doesn't really matter all that much as long as it's decent wiring. My house was built in the 60's and like I said, one run works perfectly fine. It just doesn't have that far to travel through wiring. You try to use them in a brand new house with too much distance between them (on the wiring) , and they won't work properly. Like I said, the way they work is similar to WiFi so they need to be close enough to each other to get good signal.

 

To be brutally honest though, I think on an Xbox 360, it's not going to make a massive load of difference with your internet speeds. As long as you have a solid connection on WiFi, I'd say you'd be good. Now say a non-Pro PS4 on something like my network, Ethernet can really help since those things only have kinda crap single band WiFi. The Pro, on the other hand, has far better dual band WiFi that actually gets similar download speeds to hardwiring (on my network).