What's faster between thunderbolt to gigabit Ethernet or Wi Fi

[Sekelani Zwambila]

I'm thinking of purchasing this product

Is it faster than a Wi Fi connection? I have this mac :

15-inch: 2.0GHz
with Retina display
Turbo Boost up to 3.2GHz
8GB 1600MHz memory
256GB PCIe-based flash storage1
Intel Iris Pro Graphics

My mac supports thunderbolt 2, I'm hoping for a better internet connection.

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[warcraftWidow]

Depends on your router but an Ethernet connection will almost always be faster than wifi.

 

[Trees]

What Karenkcoulter noted is an important distinction. Going with wired in the house will help increase "in the house" network connection speed between your MacBook and other stuff in the house. The distinction is that your connection to the internet will still be the same, and in this case will still be the bottleneck.

My MacBook Pro is in the home office so its easy to connect to the router via Gigabit Ethernet. If you have a NAS or other shared file system/streaming device in the house, it will help increase transfer speeds/lower transfer times in/out of your MacBook when communicating with those other devices.

 

[warcraftWidow]

Unless you have a fairly new router, the top speed of wireless 'n' (very new routers may support wireless 'ac', older routers would support only 'g'), only support speeds up to 450 Mbps (and that's if the router supports a multiple antennae setup) and a more likely top speed of 150 Mbps. An Ethernet connection connection can support up to 10 Gbps. But as noted above, these speeds are for your internal network only and don't take into account the speed you get from your internet provider.

 

[Sekelani Zwambila]

Oh okay. Thanks a lot.


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