Does using a Ethernet cable and wifi make your computer internet access go faster?

Answer 1

Unless you have a 10Mbit Ethernet router and a Wireless B network connection working in tandem, it is unlikely that using both technologies together will increase your computer's access to the internet. Furthermore, using multiple technologies to access the same service provider's connection to the Internet means all combined connections will be limited to the maximum speed of the service you're paying for.

The problem lies mostly in the complexity of the TCP/IP stack (primarily in Windows), which consumes a ton of CPU power. For example, a single core 2.4Ghz processor running Windows XP 32bit can achieve approximately 10-12Mbps maximum, even if the actual connection has a higher limit; Linux on the same computer can achieve 15-17Mbps.

Adding wireless to the configuration won't help, because the bottleneck is not the wire, it's the CPU. In fact, using both may actually decrease performance, because the CPU has to make additional decisions on where to route the packets, and may have additional firewall activity.

To increase your computer's performance, consider upgrading the network card to a 1Gbit card, or buying a Wireless N card (PCI, USB2 or better). Do not use both of them together.

For even better performance, consider using Linux instead of Windows, or if you must use Windows, consider a KillerNIC card, which offloads the TCP/IP stack to the network card's on-board processor, which will increase speed and decrease response time.

Note that you can't exceed your provider's maximum speed, so if you're already achieving 20Mbps, and you have a 20Mbps connection, you can't achieve a higher speed (say, 25Mbps) by combining the technologies, because your Internet connection will cap at the source.

The only other way you can increase your speed by using multiple network connection points is to use multiple service providers (e.g. Qwest and Comcast) simultaneously. You should only go this route if you're saturating your current connection and your computer can handle even higher speeds than your connection allows, and if you really need it to go faster.

Answer 2

No, it does not. In fact, using two connections (whether two Ethernet connections, two wireless radios, or one of each) actually will confuse the computer and generally will cause neither to work very effectively, if at all.

Now there are ways to get around this, such as using a network card that allows a process known as bonding. This makes the two connections act as if they are a single connection and you effectively have double the bandwidth when using only one connection. I do this as an internal backbone for my office network. All connections between the network switches have two gigabit links bonded together so that the backbone is 2Gbps as is the connection for the network server itself. The connection to the Internet router, however, as well as to all other devices is only a single link that is 1Gbps (except in the case of some devices that can operate no faster than Fast Ethernet: 100Mbps).

Of course, another limitation is the speed of your Internet connection itself. For example, even if you are using the fairly common but old standard of Wireless-g (aka 802.11g) which operates at a maximum of 54Mbps and your Internet connection is only 18Mbps (such as one of the local cable company's speed offerings), then your internal network can in theory move data faster than the Internet connection, so no bonding of connections will help in any fashion since even a single internal network connection is faster than the Internet pipe to which you subscribe.

If you are concerned about the amount of available bandwidth/speed that you have out to the Internet, then you have some options. First, you could subscribe to a higher speed tier provided by your internet company, presuming that they have any higher speeds. Second, you could have a second Internet connection from that same Internet company brought into your home/office/wherever you are and then use a dual-WAN router to bond the two together or otherwise make use of them by way of load-balancing. Third, if you want more fault tolerance than the second option would permit, you could have another local Internet service bring a connection to your location and use the same aforementioned dual-WAN router with them in the same fashion. This way, if one Internet provider goes down, you still have the other Internet connection available but that would not be the case in the second option, of course, if it was that company's connections that went kaput.

I hope this helps you understand your options more clearly. If you have any further questions, drop me a line. I'm glad to help you figure out the best approach for your specific situation.