Wired vs Wifi: Skip Wifi in Favor of Ethernet Where You Can
May 15, 2022
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Wifi hater. But Wifi shouldn’t be your default method for connectivity. Obviously there are a lot of places where you must use Wifi. Debbie and I have rented apartments and homes throughout our career moves, making it difficult or impossible to wire up anything. What I’m saying is build out your smart home in favor of Ethernet where you can and save Wifi for those devices that absolutely must use it.
Let me explain where I’m coming from with this. Through my career working in sports technology, I’ve had opportunities to build arenas and stadiums. Where the guest experience is a primary focus, wireless connectivity for fan mobile devices and operational needs, like point of sale and ticketing, makes Wifi a critical element of the venue. Understanding how Wifi works is key to success.
Without getting too far in the weeds over Wifi, there are many factors to consider depending on your environment. Square footage, interference and type of Wifi all play a part in how good your Wifi will perform. Simply how a home is constructed introduces a variety of challenges for Wifi — brick/stone walls (density) and distance from Wifi source (signal strength). There are other more obscure issues as well — water sources of all things (refraction). Density and distance make sense but signal refraction due to water heaters and aquariums is a surprise to many homeowners who ask me about Wifi issues. So be careful where you place your Wifi.
Understanding these challenges, when you have important smart home services like security cameras, entertainment and access control, it just makes more sense to have everything on Ethernet that you possibly can.
That being said, I still think Wifi is a great solution. Be free of physically tethered networks makes it possible to do all sorts of useful and fun things. From backyard laptop use to using your smartphone with high-speed internet, it can all be possible throughout your home thanks to Wifi. Depending on whether you use a router, mesh Wifi or a distributed solution will dictate the experience you have.
But, Wifi is ultimately a compromise. It’s a compromise based on accepting that we have to give up some performance to not be physically tied to the wall by a cable. To use a real-world example that predates Wifi by a long shot, broadcast radio is exactly the same kind of compromise. Radio allows you to listen to music anywhere. But you won’t get the same fidelity you get from listening to an album at home with hardwired speakers. Same thing with streaming services. The bitrate of a Netflix stream is a fraction of the bitrate you get from a Blu-ray player fed into your TV over an HDMI cable.
Like those things, when we use Wifi we make tradeoffs. Wifi isn’t as fast as Ethernet. It has higher latency. Too many devices connected to a Wifi create congestion and connectivity issues.
Obviously we make those compromises because it’s convenient. But we shouldn’t compromise where we don’t have to — that’s where Ethernet comes in. Before the arrival of Wifi in the late 1990s, Ethernet was the solution for business networks, though rarely, if ever, installed in homes.
As a result, there are lots of people who simply don’t think about Ethernet at all. As Debbie and I have toured model homes and homes under construction throughout our home build journey, I’m constantly surprised (and disappointed) in the lack of or entire absence of Ethernet cabling in new homes. It honestly shocks me with the lack of thought being put into the design/construction of new homes by owners and builders. I’d blame it on the pandemic, high cost of materials or supply chain but we were seeing the lack of infrastructure in new home builds years ago. I think it represents a real lack of understanding of home automation and future proofing by builders and homeowners.
A friend recently asked me for help with a smart TV issue she was having. The TV wouldn’t maintain a stable connection and streaming media connections wouldn’t connect or would frequently drop. When I showed up to help I noticed her Wifi range extender near the TV was offline. I replaced her really old router with a mesh solution to better cover the entire house and her streaming experience went from working some of the time to working perfectly all of the time. Still a Wifi solution but an example of where having a simple Ethernet cable connecting the TV to the router would have avoided the problem altogether and provided more bandwidth.
The biggest takeaway from this experience isn’t that Ethernet would have prevented this issue in the first place but that she simply hadn’t considered there was another option except Wifi to connect her TV to the internet. And that’s a shame because her home could have been wired for Ethernet as it’s a huge upgrade over Wifi.
When you utilize Ethernet you have exactly the same latency and bandwidth that you have at your modem — but anywhere in your home. There are a host of advantages to using Ethernet over Wifi in the home, including:
- Ultra-low Latency: Wifi will never be as responsive as an electrical impulse sent down a wire. Whether you’re gaming on a PC or a console, low latency is ideal.
- Speed: Even the best Wifi routers still don’t hit their maximum theoretical speeds, but it’s easy to max out an Ethernet connection.
- Stability: Barring damage to the cable or hardware, Ethernet connections are rock solid.
- No Authentication: You don’t need credentials for Ethernet. Just plug the device into the network and go.
Finally, here’s an advantage that isn’t inherent to Ethernet but is an advantage when you’re using Ethernet and Wifi in a mixed environment. Taking the high-demand devices off the Wifi network, like your laptop or smart TV, and putting them on Ethernet works wonders for lightening the load on your Wifi router. If you’re having issues, you might not need a new Wifi router after all, maybe you just need to put the most demanding items on Ethernet.
Considering how cheap Ethernet cable is, if you have the ability to connect a device with it then there is little reason not to do so. You should look for Ethernet ports on all your devices to help decide what can and can’t be connected to Ethernet. If, like my friend, you simply hadn’t considered using both Ethernet and Wifi for your home network, you might need some suggestions on where to start.
Many homes, both apartments and houses alike, have the internet entering the home in the living room because that’s where various telecommunication points, like the cable connection, enter the home. If you’re in that situation and your network gear is right there with your TV, then you have an obvious first stop. Use Ethernet patch cables and connect everything in your media center that supports it.
As an example, a media center would include the smart TV, game consoles like Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch, and streaming boxes like Apple TV and Roku. Check for Ethernet ports on everything under your TV. No Ethernet port on your smart TV? You can add an inexpensive USB Ethernet Adapter that will give you the same capabilities. If you need more ports, unmanaged network switches are also an inexpensive option.
With the trend toward work from home, similar situations can arise with home offices. If you have a bunch of gear in the same room as the modem and router, such as your PC, a network laser printer or any other office gear with an Ethernet port, don’t use the Wifi — plug it in. You’ll be happy you did on your next video call for work.
Even if your home isn’t wired for Ethernet you can still work around that and take advantage of wired speeds. You can run long Ethernet cables from one room to another or even use powerline Ethernet to route data signals over your home’s electrical wires.
Powerline Ethernet has improved greatly over the years. You can link your internet router to your gaming setup in another room with gigabit speeds. It’s not exactly having your whole house wired with Cat6 cabling, but you won’t have to fish any cables into walls or patch any drywall. This is an excellent option for apartments.
Regardless of how you go about it, switching devices to Ethernet will not only take a burden off your Wifi system but will improve that device’s connection to the local network and internet too. Not to mention it should improve the performance of the devices attached to your Wifi network.
Obviously a lot to think about here. Our smart home plan will include upwards of 60 Ethernet lines connecting everything from video security cameras to TVs to appliances. Some will be connected immediately while others are speculative, anticipating future connected devices. The fortunate part about running all that Cat6 is we’ll be able to get it installed a lot easier and cheaper during the framing stage of the build process. Not to say it can’t be done post-construction — because I’ve done it. In one of my early posts Our Smart Home roots …, I explained the process of running cable in our San Antonio for network and surround sound.
So what do you think? Is it worth the time and effort to optimize the devices in your home? What’s your preferred solution? Are you already using a combination of Ethernet and Wifi? Would you recommend the solution you’re using? Would you install Ethernet in a new home build or have it installed after the fact? What about the powerline option, is that an option you’d consider?
Let Debbie and I know in the comments, DMs and emails as we really enjoy hearing from you. Thanks again to all those following Debbie and I through our home building journey. It’s great to hear your success stories and suggestions as we move through the process. And if you like the content I’m posting each week, don’t forget to ‘Like’ and ‘Follow.’ Until next week …
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