So I’ve been streaming Czech TV for Czech Masterchef. Strange thing that happened is that the streaming degraded to such an extent that the stream basically paused every minute and then spent another few minutes buffering. Although there was no actual movement on the network view most of the time.
Today I tried moving the router so that it was connected with lan cable directly and there was no pause in the stream for the entire show.
So why would the thing struggle so much over wifi and stream seamlessly over lan?
IANAITT*, but assuming your Wi-Fi connection speed is roughly equal to your wired connection speed, I’d imagine the difference hinges on all the environment factors. With the wired connection you have a fairly consistent connection that (at the time you’re streaming) is pretty much dedicated to that task. With Wi-Fi, you have the distance, the walls in between, interference from other devices (your phone connecting to the Wi-Fi constantly, other people using the same Wi-Fi network at the same time, etc.)
What GregRedd said is basically right, WiFi can be quite unstable and fickle, walls, other WiFi connections (even from access points you cannot see), amount of people using the WiFi, distance, it all factors into WiFi speed and stability.
With a wired connection, unless the network cable is exposed to something like EMI (electromagnetic interference) from being too near power cables or certain ceiling lights, it generally doesn’t have any interruptions, its a constant stream of data traveling between the router and device.
You can almost think of WiFi as a pulsing connection, and wired as a solid stream. This is all based on my knowledge of WiFI that I have worked with so far, and stuff that college taught me. Anyone with more experienced may feel free to correct me.
I’ve got an old Vox router (a rebranded Thompson.) My other router got killed by Eskom so I decided to use the Vox until fiber was available but its taking a while. Using Surfshark and Chrome.
Living in an older apartment, there are two load bearing walls for the signal to get through.
Old router. Surfshark. Chrome. Two walls. Interference from apartment neighbours.
There’s some things you can do to try boost your routers’ Wifi signal strength, but unless you’re sitting right on top of it all of those things you’ve mentioned are going to contribute to a degraded signal for streaming.