Long ethernet cable vs 3-4 WiFi bars

[Black Jake]

Hi everyone , hope you're doing fine. I'm new in this forum and it's my first time ever signing up in a forum so i hope i'm not asking in the wrong category.

So i'm connecting with a Wireless USB Adapter (TP Link TL-WN822N) for like 3 years now , the thing is that the distance between the modem and my PC are 3 floors (My room is on the 3th floor from one side , and the modem is on the first floor from the other side of the house) i'm not that good at explaining so i hope you get it . I was wondering if i'll have a better connection with a 60m-70m ethernet cable than my 4 WiFi bars ? And will the length of the cable affect too much on the internet speed or something ? 

Thank you. (Sorry for grammar mistakes)

[Quinten Verhelst]

An ethernet cable will be faster.

Even standard cat5e handles at least 1gig at 100m

if you can, wire up as many devices as you can

[emosun]

cable would be a more stable connection

the best solution would be a 70m coax cable and just put the router by your pc.

coax can go farther than ethernet , it already went from the street into your house with nothing in between a little more won't hurt it.

[Enderman]

Ethernet cables are always better, faster, more reliable, etc.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Assuming ideal conditions, neither or is better since the internet is likely going to be the bottleneck. However, Wi-Fi is less reliable and the bars don't really mean anything other than the signal itself. If you have a lot of other Wi-Fi networks on the same frequency and channel, even if you have full bars, you can run into connection issues.

 

If you go the wired route, the length of the cable largely doesn't matter. For instance, Cat5 is good for 100m before you'll start needing repeaters to ensure reliability.

[Black Jake]

Damn , didn't expect such a fast answers , thank you so much guys

 

[Black Jake]

12 minutes ago, emosun said:

cable would be a more stable connection

the best solution would be a 70m coax cable and just put the router by your pc.

coax can go farther than ethernet , it already went from the street into your house with nothing in between a little more won't hurt it.

Is there like a Ethernet/Coax Adapter or something ? Sorry i don't know much about it i only know Cat 5 cable 

[emosun]

1 minute ago, Black Jake said:

Is there like a Ethernet/Coax Adapter or something ? Sorry i don't know much about it i only know Cat 5 cable 

yeah the modem , thats how the isp does it

[mariushm]

Ethernet is designed to work up to 100 meters. No matter if the cable is 1 meter long or 100 meters, the performance would be exactly the same (* see fineprint). You'll get super low latency since the signals are traveling at super high speed ( ~ 299,792,458 meters per second) and very high reliability, while through wireless the data has to be arranged in packets, sent through the air and be reflected by walls and shit, arrive at the other end and converted back into ethernet packets or data may have to be re-transmitted in case of errors.

 

* fineprint : depending on the quality of the network cable you use, some network cards may have problems with very long cable lengths IF energy savings options are enabled in the network card driver... see "green ethernet" or "low power" modes in the network card's driver configuration. By default, most network cards enable these "green" features which are supposed to lower the transmission power of the network cards or adjust the power dynamically in order to save maybe a third or half a watt of electricity.

 

Some kinds of cheap ethernet cables are made out of copper clad aluminum (CCA, aluminum wires coated with a very thin layer of copper) instead of pure copper because these makes such cables cheaper (copper is more expensive than aluminum). The aluminum in the wires increases the resistance of the wires and this means if you have two cables of same length, you need more power to transmit data through the aluminum based cable in order to get the same signal quality on the other ends. 

For 5-15 meters of cable, the composition of the wires doesn't matter, but at 60+ meters, it does matter.

 

 

[Black Jake]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

Ethernet is designed to work up to 100 meters. No matter if the cable is 1 meter long or 100 meters, the performance would be exactly the same (* see fineprint). You'll get super low latency since the signals are traveling at super high speed ( ~ 299,792,458 meters per second) and very high reliability, while through wireless the data has to be arranged in packets, sent through the air and be reflected by walls and shit, arrive at the other end and converted back into ethernet packets or data may have to be re-transmitted in case of errors.

 

* fineprint : depending on the quality of the network cable you use, some network cards may have problems with very long cable lengths IF energy savings options are enabled in the network card driver... see "green ethernet" or "low power" modes in the network card's driver configuration. By default, most network cards enable these "green" features which are supposed to lower the transmission power of the network cards or adjust the power dynamically in order to save maybe a third or half a watt of electricity.

 

Some kinds of cheap ethernet cables are made out of copper clad aluminum (CCA, aluminum wires coated with a very thin layer of copper) instead of pure copper because these makes such cables cheaper (copper is more expensive than aluminum). The aluminum in the wires increases the resistance of the wires and this means if you have two cables of same length, you need more power to transmit data through the aluminum based cable in order to get the same signal quality on the other ends. 

For 5-15 meters of cable, the composition of the wires doesn't matter, but at 60+ meters, it does matter.

 

 

Damn that's pretty deep. Thank you buddy 

[Alex Atkin UK]

8 hours ago, emosun said:

cable would be a more stable connection

the best solution would be a 70m coax cable and just put the router by your pc.

coax can go farther than ethernet , it already went from the street into your house with nothing in between a little more won't hurt it.

I'd have to disagree, while most of the time an extra 70m of coax shouldn't make a difference, there are occasions where the signal coming in can be weak and adding more cable will reduce your speed.  If you DO have problems your ISP will then refuse to help as you aren't using the cable they provided and its easy to accidentally get a strand of the shield shorting to the core when making your own cable.

 

Makes far more sense to run ethernet, its MUCH easier to mount around the house as its flexible whereas coax is not.  If you don't want to run several cables back to the router, just use one and get a cheap Gigabit switch to plug everything into at the other end.

[emosun]

7 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I'd have to disagree, while most of the time an extra 70m of coax shouldn't make a difference, there are occasions where the signal coming in can be weak and adding more cable will reduce your speed.  If you DO have problems your ISP will then refuse to help as you aren't using the cable they provided and its easy to accidentally get a strand of the shield shorting to the core when making your own cable.

 

Makes far more sense to run ethernet, its MUCH easier to mount around the house as its flexible whereas coax is not.  If you don't want to run several cables back to the router, just use one and get a cheap Gigabit switch to plug everything into at the other end.

k neat i disagree

[suchamoneypit]

2 hours ago, emosun said:

k neat i disagree

What about what he said wasn't correct? If you are going to disagree with a well thought out and good response, then you need to back up those claims. So OP can be better informed as to why, as well as Alex Atkin UK.

 

there is no shame in being wrong, you should want to learn more and improve your knowledge.