I recently moved and installed a 1 Gb/s fiber internet plan. The internet works well over Wi‑Fi, but my desktop is much slower. Using a TP-Link AX1800 Wi‑Fi 6 adapter, I get around 40 MB/s for both downloads and uploads. When I connect the computer with an Ethernet cable, the speed drops to about 10 MB/s. I would prefer Ethernet so I do not have to leave the cable across the floor, but I do not know much about networking. What should I check, and could you explain it simply?
4 Answers
Your speed numbers may be getting mixed up. Internet plans are advertised in megabits per second, while many downloads show megabytes per second. Roughly speaking, 100 Mbps is about 10–12 MB/s, and 1,000 Mbps is about 100–家125 MB/s after overhead. So 10 MB/s strongly suggests a 100 Mbps Ethernet link, while 40 MB/s over Wi‑Fi is around 320 Mbps.
The wired connection may only be negotiating at 100 Mb/s instead of 1 Gb/s. Check the Ethernet connection details on the computer to see whether the link speed says 100 Mbps or 1.0 Gbps. Also check the lights on the router and computer's Ethernet port, since some devices use different colors for different speeds.
Try replacing the Ethernet cable with a good Cat5e or Cat6 cable and plug it directly into a gigabit LAN port on the router. A damaged cable or a bad connector can make the devices fall back to a slower connection. Avoid using an old cable, a phone cable, or an unusually cheap adapter.
If a new cable does not help, test another LAN port on the router and check that the computer's Ethernet adapter supports gigabit speeds. Updating the network driver and checking the adapter's Speed & Duplex setting can also help, but normally it should be left on Auto Negotiation. Make sure you are testing with the same speed-test server or download source each time.
The light is green, and I believe green is also supposed to indicate the faster connection, so I am not sure whether the cable or the port is the problem.