Sorry If i posted this in the wrong catergory. It wont let me post it in other fourms other than this one and a few other ones..

Which is better to use??
Wi-Fi or Ethernet

When I am on ethernet i get 100Mbs but on Wi-Fi I get 54Mbs??

Is there a diffrence in speed...

Ethernet. It achieves speeds up to 1 Gigabit per second, where WiFi achieves up to 300 Megabits per second.
Latencies are far better over ethernet, more consistent. On WiFi they vary.
Conclusion : Ethernet is better.

This has nothing to do with Microsoft Operating Systems. Moved.

Ethernet: much faster but requires a cable
Wi-Fi: a bit slower but much more mobile

So it really depends on the circumstances...

Just to add, Ethernet can transfer at a rate of anything from 10Mbps to 1Gbps, depending on your hardware. Wi-Fi is in theory slower however this is the theoretical maximum transfer rate - speed of a connection is always limited by the slowest hardware / connection involved. For instance, you would only really see an Ethernet speed improvement if transferring information internally on the network. It wouldn't speed up your internet, for example if you have 8Mbps internet, the network can't transfer the information any faster than it's getting it. In reality an advantage will only be seen with Ethernet if you are running a network where there are many internal transfers of data, and the speed of Wi-Fi is plenty for everyday usage, add to this the portability, and unless the internal speed of the network is absolutely key, the benefits of Wi-Fi outweigh those of Ethernet IMO.

Ethernet is faster but you are really only going to see any difference if you transfer a lot of files on a LAN and need all the speed you can get. For anything online chances are your internet speed is the limiting factor, not your wifi. You can always do speed tests to check.

How 'bout 16GFC Fibre Channel? Faster than either and costs more than both .

Ethernet will always be better however you guys are neglecting that it depends on what kind of cable your using. The general thing though is that wires will always be better since with wireless your not always going to get that peek speed and Ethernet is constant.

Speed wise though its dependent on what wiring your using Cat 5E is up to 100 MB transfer rate. Cat 6 is up to 1 GB just wanted to make that a point I'm all for Ethernet though. And yes if your super awesome you have fiber wiring all over the place lmfao.

It's worth pointing out as well that while Gigabit Ethernet is great, it isn't necessarily easy to achieve true gigabit transfer speeds. You will need:
1. Category 6e cabling (easy/cheap)
2. Gigabit switches (easy/cheap)
3. Gigabit network cards (fairly easy/fairly cheap)
4. A storage system that can actually transmit at gigabit speeds (moderate/expensive)
5. A processor that can actually keep up with gigabit speeds (easy/not too pricey)

One and two aren't difficult; you should be able to just buy a decent Linksys or Cisco SMB Gigabit switch you can connect to a router and link everything through the switch. While Cat6e cabling isn't hard to get, keep in mind that if you're using Cat6e for Gigabit then there are many more installation requirements than if it's only being used for 100Mbit (e.g. maximum cable curvature, etc...). So, if it's being professionally installed, you'll want to ensure the electrician knows what he's doing.

Three isn't hard, odds are you already have one, but odds are also it's off-loading processing to the CPU and there is non-trivial CPU overhead with TX/RX at gigabit speeds. You're going to need a fairly fast CPU and you are going to want a NIC that can support Receive-Side Scaling so the TX/RX Gigabit processing load can be distributed over multiple cores. The alternative is to get a decent network card that handles most of the logic on-board, but, there's a reason most network cards are cheap these days!

Four is expensive to do well; if you're running SSDs you'll be fine, but odds are you want Gigabit for a file server setup and so you can't afford a multi TB SSD rig (and if you can, I envy you!). So you're going to want a decent hardware RAID (soft-raid probably won't cut it and that overhead is on top of the gigabit TX/RX overhead). So, you'll need a nice Adaptec/LSI hardware RAID card and some SATA2 drives to match in a RAID 1/5/10/whatever configuration.

As a frame of reference, transferring a 2GB file from the server here to my desktop at around 90MB/sec averaged around 25% utilisation on each of 4 cores, with the underlying system being a 2x E5620 Xeon server (the system is virtualised with 4 vCPUs). Needless to say, you'd need an extremely fast CPU to handle that without RSS for distribution over multiple cores.

On the other hand, Wireless-N at 300Mbit is trivial to setup. Buy a 802.11n AP/Router, buy an 802.11n WiFi card (your laptop probably already has one), and enjoy!

Actually, for a gigabit file server, you can in theory use a SATA II HDD. Remember, 100MBPS file transfer over FTP usually averages at about 6-7MB/s.

Ralish, you are a bit off for what is needed (sounded like 10 gig reqs mostly):

1. Category 5 cabling (I'd be shocked to see lower but dead cheap)
2. Gigabit switches (50/50 if current is newish and was cheap, cheap though)
3. Gigabit network cards (fairly easy/fairly cheap, good chance you already have them)
4. Nearly any hard drive esata/usb3/sata II/sata III connection or better

Ethernet is more secure, than WiFi WPA2 Important reason.

P.S. You really need more than 100 Mbit/sec in home?

Yeah! I really do I upload large files very frequently but I cant afford to have a fast speed like that!

Only Ethernet. Follow the advice of zamadatix and ralish for construction a network. And ISP with 1 Gbit channel

Ethernet all the way, More reliable, At least for me.

Yes for the small amount of people we need a gigabyte ethernet speed cause its kinda hard to transfer a blu-ray movie stored on the hard drive using wireless haha. What I use is the stuff I bought from monoprice lovely company awesome being able to transfer at the fast speeds that I need and use almost everyday. I could theoretically stream an entire blu-ray movie simply by mounting the ISO using daemon tools.

As others have mentioned ethernet is faster for transfer within the LAN, but since internet speeds are generally slower than max for wifi it doesn't make a difference with internet.

Security-wise, anyone know if its possible to break WPA encryption? Other than by brute force obviously.

Yes its possible to break WPA encryption I'll ask around if you want though about the various methods if you wish.

I have mobile phone, iPad, etc...
Thus I need wifi to make them connected to the web.

Personally I don't prefer linking laptops with wires, as I often move them and not in the same room of router.

Well, situation varies, and I don't have fast connection.
Desktop PC is wired.

Ethernet supports up to 1 Gbps which is always way faster than Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n. Ethernet is also private by default unlike Wifi which needs to be encrypted with WEP / WPA / WPA2 for security. Unencrypted wifi is subject to wardriving and packet sniffing (firesheep firefox plugin / wireshark / etc.)

I'd disagree with this; at a minimum, you need Cat5e cabling, and realistically, this will be fine for the large majority of cases. That being said though, I'm pretty sure last I checked only Cat6 is certified for usage in Gigabit networks. Cat5e will definitely work, but Cat6 has far more stringent requirements in the cable construction and quality, and honestly, it's really not that expensive these days, so you might as well use it if you can considering the small price difference.

I am currently have BT as my internet, can i really make it 1Gbs

I use the internet, wifi is pretty good too.

This is purely in regards to a LAN (Local Area Network); increasing your internet connection speed generally means talking to your ISP and a gigabit connection is going to cost you an arm, leg, and your firstborn

Or €18/month where I live, firstborns come cheap here...