Whenever I cajole my way onto This Week in Google—a web show that requires reliable streaming video—the support staff insists on a hard-wired connection to the router for video chat. It's a pain, but the reason is plain: Wi-Fi is, according to a study of 14,000 connections, 30 percent slower than cables in most homes and offices.
Image via osde8info.
It's something you might have known from experience, but it's interesting to see the convenience-to-quality ratio put into numbers. PC World quotes researchers from Epitiro after their tests of 14,000 Wi-Fi connections in the UK, U.S., and other countries, and finds that most people are losing around 30 percent of their speed capacity. It's not that notable, usually, because browsing, email, and other standard Wi-Fi uses aren't impacted. But for video chat, and video streaming, the ball and chain of a cable is probably a sacrifice probably worth making.