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However, even the Cat5e cable in common use supports up to 1 Gb/s. The exact maximum speed of your Ethernet cable depends on the type of Ethernet cable you’re using. On the other hand, a wired Ethernet connection can theoretically offer up to 10 Gb/s, if you have a Cat6 cable. Even though this is a maximum speed for all your wireless devices to share (and you likely won’t get those speeds in the real world), Wi-Fi has become good enough to handle most of our daily tasks. Wi-Fi has gotten significantly faster over the last few years, thanks to new standards like 802.11ac and 802.11n, which offer maximum speeds of 866.7 Mb/s and 150 Mb/s, respectively.
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But the real-world differences are smaller than you might think. RELATED: Upgrade Your Wireless Router to Get Faster Speeds and More Reliable Wi-FiĮthernet is just plain faster than Wi-Fi-there’s no getting around that fact. RELATED: What Kind of Ethernet (Cat5, Cat5e, Cat6, Cat6a) Cable Should I Use? How Much Faster Is Ethernet? To help you make the decision, we’re going to take a look at the three main advantages of using Ethernet over the best Wi-Fi router-faster speeds, lower latency, and reliable connections. But it’s usually worth running Ethernet cables to the devices that matter, if you can-gaming and media PCs (or consoles), backup devices, and set-top boxes being just a few examples. You probably won’t be connecting an Ethernet cable to your smartphone any time soon.
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