Is your broadband the worse for Wi-Fi?

Stuart Corner
Friday, 11 March 2011 14:05

Your IT - Home IT

Internet performance monitoring company Epitiro says consumers are losing on average of 30 percent of downstream broadband bandwidth and suffering 20 to 40 percent increases in latency by using Wi-Fi rather than wired ethernet to connect their PCs etc to their broadband router.

"Consumers may find on-line game play, VoIP telephony and video streaming unsatisfactory when using Wi-Fi, and downloading large files such as MP3s, videos and programs will take longer," Epitiro says.

However, Epitiro's research - conducted in Europe and the USA - found that web page download times are virtually the same using Wi-Fi or wired connections: Web pages download times are less susceptible to changes in line speed because the many artefacts that comprise web pages are relatively small in size.

The company suggests interference from neighbouring access points could be partly to blame for Wi-Fi's poor performance saying: "Many Wi-Fi routers share the same default communication channel which can cause interference in urban areas, and lead to dropped connections or slow service. Consumers can improve services by selecting a different modem channel."

It adds: "Wi-Fi speeds will also be degraded by physical barriers such as walls, doors and furniture, as well as interference from other devices in the same frequency range including baby monitors, television remote controls, microwave ovens, garage door openers and cordless phones."

Epitiro monitored the performance of 14,001 panellists in UK, USA, Italy and Spain. 56 percent of the survey group connected via Wi-Fi, 44 percent via wired ethernet connection. Epitiro's ipQ quality of experience analysis product was used to do the testing. The full report "Wi-Fi in the Home - A Study into the Effect of the 'Air Mile' on Consumer Broadband Performance" is available here.