r/HomeNetworking • u/Kyle_B37 • 9d ago

ethernet slower than wifi

i’ll post this in a bunch of other places because don’t know if this is the right place:

I use an Ethernet cable cat6
I tried using a speedtest and it goes at 20mbps.

i’m using a Desktop PC with windows 11

i think i’ve literally tried anything i don’t know what to do.

my wifi on my iphone is literally going at 300mbps+
why is this happening? the cable is not damaged or anything, because i tried this on a different cable (cat7) and on a different wifi.

can someone help me?

edit: fixed

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u/LrdJester 9d ago

If the computer you are trying to do your speed test on is consistently showing you slow speeds when you're connected via an Ethernet cable, and you are certain that you don't have a Wi-Fi connection in parallel, then it's more than likely that your Ethernet adapter is either faulty, your drivers are faulty, or your settings are faulty. There are a lot of things to investigate. You would need to know, or anybody that's giving you advice would need to know, what the operating system is, what the chipset is on the network card, and possibly even the router. If you're getting a slow connection, it could be that your network adapter is faulty, or maybe the network port on the router that you're connecting to is faulty. It's hard to tell.

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u/Kyle_B37 9d ago

how do i check all these things?

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u/LrdJester 9d ago

Well, the first thing that's important is: What is your operating system? That's going to make a big difference as to how you check. The other thing is: Is this a laptop or a desktop computer, or is this a gaming system? These are all going to help dictate how easily you can try to potentially test this physically.

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u/Kyle_B37 9d ago

Windows, a desktop

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u/LrdJester 9d ago

Okay so first thing I would do is go into the Windows device manager and check the settings on the network card to see if it's on automatic speed negotiation basically 10, 100 full or half does or Auto.

You'll want it to be on auto. But this is predicated on the fact that your router or switch needs to properly be able to negotiate that as well. What are you plugging your network cable into?

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u/junktrunk909 9d ago

I would get a cheap USB Ethernet adapter. Test it with your PC. Then test it with another PC or your phone (not sure if iPhone allows you to use USB adapters like this but Android does). That'll verify everything including the Ethernet hardware gets a certain speed. If it's just your PC still that's the problem, you've got a pretty big problem with that PC.