Wi-Fi connections are wireless and allow devices to be located anywhere that can receive a Wi-Fi signal but share the bandwidth of the connecting Wi-Fi access point with other devices connected to the same AP. How do Ethernet connections differ from Wi-Fi?įrom a user perspective, an access Ethernet connection requires a physical cable and provides a dedicated link from the switch to the end device with bandwidth up to the speed of the connected port. Wi-Fi and Ethernet are outlined by separately in the IEEE 802 protocols, with Ethernet defined by IEEE 802.3 and Wi-Fi defined by 802.11. The end device is connected to the access point and the access point is connected to, or is part of, the Ethernet switch instead of being connected directly to the switch by physical cable.
Wi-Fi allows the freedom of mobility without the need to connect with a network cable.įrom a network point of view, typically Wi-Fi requires a wireless access point device to act as the interface to the network. Wi-Fi can be seen as an extension to an Ethernet access network allowing wireless connections to an Ethernet network. Ethernet switches have also become the common network switch type and foundational technology for most networks. The IEEE 802.3 media standards focus on cable type (coaxial, twisted-pair and fiber), bandwidth capacity (10 Mbps to Tbps) and transmission distance.Įthernet has evolved dramatically since its first application and today is the de facto protocol for IP-based networks and the internet. More formally, Ethernet is a common name for the IEEE 802.3 standard based on the Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) protocol, which defines when to transmit and what is to happen if a collision is detected, as well as endpoint addressing, transmission speeds, and media. These network-connected devices are physically connected with a cable to an Ethernet switch that then manages the flow of data between devices, applications, data, cloud services and the internet. Ethernet technology is designed to solve the problem of packet collision in a shared network by having network-connected devices follow a set of rules that allow devices to talk to each another without talking over each other.
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