MSFS users: did going from Wifi to Ethernet make a diff?

[Noel 4,529]

SpeedTest always shows I have good bandwidth via Wifi to an Xfinity cable modem router, typically around 200-350mbps.  I notice in MSFS times when I have ample CPU/GPU headroom and yet textures can look blurry, other times shockingly razor sharp, and I never know the reasons why.  Because of high measured bandwidth I assume this comes from MS server side not delivering what it needs to, but I don't really know.  I've heard Xfinity throttle back download speeds sometimes during periods of congestion or what have you.  To try to rule this in or out bought a VPN and it made no difference whatsoever so I cancelled the VPN within the trial period. 

If you were in my situation and went to ethernet did it make an unequivocal difference, or not?  It will be a considerable pain to route cable to my PC.

Thanks

PS:  Mods, please leave this here for at least a few days it started in the correct forum but I am afraid it will go unseen there.  Thanks

[Bobsk8 12,800]

1 minute ago, Noel said:

SpeedTest always shows I have good bandwidth via Wifi to an Xfinity cable modem router, typically around 200-350mbps.  I notice in MSFS times when I have ample CPU/GPU headroom and yet textures can look blurry, other times shockingly razor sharp, and I never know the reasons why.  Because of high measured bandwidth I assume this comes from MS server side not delivering what it needs to, but I don't really know.  I've heard Xfinity throttle back download speeds sometimes during periods of congestion or what have you.  To try to rule this in or out bought a VPN and it made no difference whatsoever so I cancelled the VPN within the trial period. 

If you were in my situation and went to ethernet did it make an unequivocal difference, or not?  It will be a considerable pain to route cable to my PC.

Thanks

PS:  Mods, please leave this here for at least a few days it started in the correct forum but I am afraid it will go unseen there.  Thanks

Is there a great deal of traffic on the wifi channel you are on, because that can have an effect.

[Noel 4,529]

Just now, Bobsk8 said:

Is there a great deal of traffic on the wifi channel you are on, because that can have an effect.

Not in our house with our users, FWIW

[Bobsk8 12,800]

Just now, Noel said:

Not in our house with our users, FWIW

When I look at my wifi, I see neighbors wifi all around me. I have an app on my phone that shows this. I have ethernet connected to my router. 

[Noel 4,529]

I guess what I could do is run a long cable thru the hallway and see if it's any different.  The problem is most often it's great, which isn't a problem I know but it begs the question as to why sometimes textures are not good.  As I say always SpeedTest shows great bandwidth thru WiFi, but who knows what that really means in this context. 

[Noel 4,529]

1 minute ago, Bobsk8 said:

When I look at my wifi, I see neighbors wifi all around me. I have an app on my phone that shows this. I have ethernet connected to my router. 

Sure, but that's their WiFi so won't have impact on your WiFi functionality that I can see, why would it?  Some internet providers throttle back high data requests I understand but I didn't see this at all during my VPN trial.  I guess a better question to you Bob might be, do you notice periods of poor texture resolution, ever?

Edited July 14, 2023 by Noel

[Bobsk8 12,800]

8 minutes ago, Noel said:

Sure, but that's their WiFi so won't have impact on your WiFi functionality that I can see, why would it?  Some internet providers throttle back high data requests I understand but I didn't see this at all during my VPN trial.  I guess a better question to you Bob might be, do you notice periods of poor texture resolution, ever?

No I don't see that. Once in awhile, when landing, I get a few stutters, but it is very rare, and I think that is a bandwidth error from Asobo servers. I have zero experience  on using wifi to my PC, maybe someone else can shed some more light on the subject. 

Edited July 14, 2023 by Bobsk8

[psolk 3,049]

41 minutes ago, Noel said:

Sure, but that's their WiFi so won't have impact on your WiFi functionality that I can see, why would it?  Some internet providers throttle back high data requests I understand but I didn't see this at all during my VPN trial.  I guess a better question to you Bob might be, do you notice periods of poor texture resolution, ever?

Because airspace is a shared medium with a limited number of channels so if you are on Channel 11 and your neighbor is on channel 11 there is contention. Similarly there is more interference at 2.4 so moving as much as possible to 5 reduces interfering noise.  Depending on where your router and system are something as trivial as the microwave coming on will actually introduce noise into the 2.4 spectrum.  You may not think there is a lot of activity on your wifi network but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of noise and traffic in the airspace.  

Also, as an aside, I sell wifi for a living and my desktop is wired.  Wifi6 changes things but even with MIMO wifi is more like a token ring network than a switched network whereby every communication stream has to wait it's turn.  Wired networks are switched with no airspace contention.  Our general rule of thumb in an office is if it moves, wifi, if it doesn't, wire it... That includes printers because each printer broadcasting itself on 2.4 actually interferes with client traffic.  

Edited July 14, 2023 by psolk

[Mike S KPDX 598]

Wired Ethernet connections are faster, more reliable, and have lower latency than wireless connections.  Always.

[Ron Attwood 3,471]

23 minutes ago, psolk said:

Because airspace is a shared medium with a limited number of channels so if you are on Channel 11 and your neighbor is on channel 11 there is contention. Similarly there is more interference at 2.4 so moving as much as possible to 5 reduces interfering noise.  Depending on where your router and system are something as trivial as the microwave coming on will actually introduce noise into the 2.4 spectrum.  You may not think there is a lot of activity on your wifi network but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of noise and traffic in the airspace.  

Also, as an aside, I sell wifi for a living and my desktop is wired.  Wifi6 changes things but even with MIMO wifi is more like a token ring network than a switched network whereby every communication stream has to wait it's turn.  Wired networks are switched with no airspace contention.  Our general rule of thumb in an office is if it moves, wifi, if it doesn't, wire it... That includes printers because each printer broadcasting itself on 2.4 actually interferes with client traffic.  

At last some has told it like it is. Wifi is OK for 'normal' internet things but for 'gaming' it's a no-no. I often wonder how many complaints of stutters and frame drops are due to wifi. A lot, I reckon.

[edpatino 1,971]

8 minutes ago, Mike S KPDX said:

Wired Ethernet connections are faster, more reliable, and have lower latency than wireless connections.  Always.

Fully agree, but the OP wants to keep using wi-fi....

[tpete61 228]

MSFS users: did going from Wifi to Ethernet make a diff?......

Of course not!

Edited July 14, 2023 by tpete61

[AJZip 251]

The Wifi in our house is very iffy - in many rooms, the signal from neighbours over the road and either side is stronger than from our own router!  Wifi repeaters are very unreliable in the house and lose a significant proportion of the data speeds.  So, as it is impractical in normal times for me to run an ethernet cable direct to the router, for normal use I use instead a powerline adapter (ethernet connect from router to powerline plugged in next to it, ethernet connect from powerline plugged in near computer to PC). 

In data speed, even though the powerline suppliers claim there are no losses, there are - and big ones.  But in reliability of signal it's much better than using the wifi for me and it's still fast enough to run MSFS in VR at decent quality levels. 

When there's a big download I trail a cable down the stairs to the router and find that the download speeds are almost twice as fast.

Edited July 14, 2023 by AJZip

[mmcmah 423]

Wifi is never going to be better than wired, and often, it will be lower. It's just the nature of the connection medium to have a greater amount of interference. Now, depending on the speed of the actual internet connection itself (ie. gigabit fiber to the home or 20Mbps DSL), that may or may not make a massive difference.

If the internet connection speed you could realize through an ethernet connection is very high, then likely you will do a lot better than wifi. Even the 5Ghz channels theoretically capable of very high speeds ("higher" than gigabit, for example), are severely limited by range, interference (object as well as other users) and then there's the overhead of wifi connections.

I'd love to say that wifi will be good to keep, but wired is always better unless you're already on a constrained connection. I have run cable drops to enable the use of wired connections wherever needed.

Edited July 14, 2023 by mmcmah

[David Mills 4,774]

My own internet speed is about 130Mbps (far slower than many of you), and my computer is connected to the router via WiFi. Nonetheless, this setup works extremely well for me. I almost never suffer the texture blurring and popping that others have sometimes reported. So I don't think that speed alone is the problem. The problem is perhaps an unsteady throughput speed. I remember in past decades that all of Cisco's routers (of a particular model) defaulted to the same channel, as @psolk noted above. The result was that if your neighbor also had a similar Cisco router, the signals would interfere with each other and produce intermittent throughput juggernauts. And because this signal interference was intermittent (even depending on the weather), it was very difficult to diagnose. Most of us -- and most of our neighbors -- have no clue what channel our WiFi is using.

Edited July 14, 2023 by David Mills