Hi,

I have a private internet connection.My wife's laptop and my laptop are in the same room as the modem.

What I want to do is to have my laptop connected to the modem by cable and my wife's laptop using the wireless connection.

This will mean that my computer will go slightly faster because it's connected bu wire

and cable  connections are faster than wireless ones.

If that's true.

 

So I hooked a wire up between the modem and my laptop but the task bar says I'm connected wirelessly.

 

So my questions are,

Am I right in thinking that my computer will go faster on a cable connection.

If so how do I do it and how can I tell which way it's connected

 

Thanks.

Unless you have an Internet connection that exceeds the speed of your Wifi, it's probably not going to make a lot of difference.

If you are looking at hogging the connection so your wife doesn't slow down your downloads watching Thai soaps online, then you are talking about a feature called QoS (Quality of Service), which allows you to give preference to one connection over another.

You'll need to look at your Router manual to see how it's implemented.

 

 

Thanks Chicog,

I don't have any special internet connection and that would explain why

there is no difference in speed when I connect by wire.

 

Is there any way I can tell if it's connected by wire at all.

 

Also my laptop keeps disconnecting and I have to go to the task bar and reconnect.

Any idea why that may be and how I might fix it.

 

Turn off your wifi on your laptop - different units have different ways to do that.

Yea, be sure to turn your Wifi off, otherwise the hard wire connection may not occur.   I doubt you'll see any difference in your connection speed between Wifi and hard wire connection unless you had a higher speed plan like above 20Mb or your Wifi signal was weak...but since you said your are making the Wifi connection in the same room your signal will be strong/not reduced by walls/obstacles. 

Windows 8.1 seems to use the cable rather than the wifi if both are available - the only good thing I can say about Windows 8.1

Great,

I disconnected from the WiFi and it must have automatically connected to the cable.

It's defiantly faster now.

 

So if my WiFi signal was slow and kept disconnected maybe my WiFi receiver is dodgy.I dropped my laptop and had to get it repaired.

 

I will wait and see if it still keeps disconnecting now that I on hard wire.

Windows 8.1 seems to use the cable rather than the wifi if both are available - the only good thing I can say about Windows 8.1

 

 I use Win 8.1 also and it defaults to Wifi as the first choice (i.e., both a Wifi and ethernet connection are available).   See the first Answer at this webpage where it talks about changing connection binding and gives a link for instructions.  I followed the instructions and sure enough my Win 8.1 is set with a Wifi connection as first priority....see below image.

 

 [attachment=279168:Capture.JPG]