What are Ethernet ports and how do they effect internet? (IF they even do)?

[Joshua]

So there are 4 ethernet ports on my router. Which ethernet port is the best and will give the best internet? Does it even matter? Also, I just got new internet today (30 down, 5 up, was 40 ping), and it was fine. But now all of a sudden its sinking down dramatically to 15 down and the ping is now at 56 and rising....what do I do?

[786]

No difference between the ports on the router.
~

[Fred]

Make sure none of your machines is infected with spyware, and nobody is using torrents or other prohibited connections, Or they will permanently cap your service. Your ethernet ports are to connect computers directly to the router. It does not matter which port you use, they are all faster than your Internet connection. Do NOT use them AND wireless on the same machine it will seriously slow the connection or stop it totally.

[Hugo]

Ethernet ports on a router should all be the same, Ethernet is the best method of connecting to the internet because you are directly connecting to the router, which is connected to the modem, which in turn connects you to the internet. If on the other hand you connect to the router wirelessly, you are adding ping/latency, as well as noise (not literal sound, but disturbance between devices), and other such things. For the best internet connect to your router via a Cat6 cable (which is the highest speed, and losest latency/ping consumer cable around), I'd suggest calling up your internet service provider and tell them your internet is slowing down, and also use a direct connection to the router for the most stable, and best internet speeds.

-good luck

[Boss]

Ethernet ports is where you plug in your Ethernet cable in it can effect users if your downloading all the bandwidth.

[rowlfe]

An Ethernet port is a connection for data to the router. The router is like a traffic cop at an intersection, directing traffic at an intersection. The wire connecting one Ethernet port to another is exactly like a telephone wire, but instead of analog voice traffic, it carries digital data traffic. The wire uses a MODEM (modulator-demodulator) at each end where there is an analog to digital and digital to analog conversions going on. Hardwire ports are all created equally, so there no one wired port that is "better" than another. This does NOT apply to wireless connections. The traffic cop (router) treats all ports equally. Based on the numbers you have, you are likely the victim of the dreaded "party line effect". Both wireless and cable broadband work in exactly the same manner, that of a telephone party line. The party line effect is a slowdown of network traffic, which is exactly what YOU are seeing. The slowdown is the result of the combination of two different mechanisms. First, the number of users. Each user (computer) has a push-to-talk walkie-talkie. When you want to talk (send data) you first listen to see if the line is clear and if it is, you push-to-talk and send data. No problem. If the line is busy, you wait and when the line clears, you talk. Again, no problem. The problem arises when you are not alone waiting. When the line clears, you both try to talk, and collide, interfere with each other and neither gets through. So you wait for an acknowledgement packet and not getting one, you try again, and you collide again, and you try again, and again, and again until eventually one of you keys up while the other is listening, thus taking the floor and forcing everyone else to wait. This traffic jam results in DEAD TIME, when no data is moving in either direction for anyone. Your connect SPEED has nothing to do with it. Dead time means everyone is slowing down. The amount of data moved per unit of time is lower. What changes is THROUGHPUT, which is the amount of data moved per unit time. People confuse throughput with SPEED. SPEED is a constant determined by the radio frequencies used. The higher the frequencies, the faster the speed, which in an ideal world, also applies to throughput. But as you can see, traffic jams lower throughput for ALL users, but not speed at which data moves. When moving, the data moves at a constant speed, but in shorter and shorter bursts. The traffic jams mean all users get fewer bursts of data per minute. The second problem is with the access point hardware at your ISP. It has one transmitter just as you do, which means it can only "talk" to ONE USER at a time, while everyone else waits for their turn. While you are waiting, none of your data moves, which means dead time for YOU with no data moving, lowering your individual throughput, until you finally get a turn and send and receive a burst of data. Cable advertises high speeds, but you can never achieve that speed in reality since you SHARE the bandwidth with all of the others users neighbors on able) on the line with you. You get smaller and smaller time slices of the time talking with the access point as the number of users increases. How many of your neighbors are on cable broadband with you? Then there is a natural bottleneck of the data pipe connecting you to your ISP. It is exactly like a one lane bridge where traffic alternates direction, from you to your ISP or from your ISP to you. The speed that data crosses the bridge is FIXED by the hardware of the modem. Think of your data as a railroad train. The problem arises when there are more than one train. The trains merge to make a longer train, and thus take longer to cross the bridge. You end up sharing the data pipe among all computers and applications running on your network. There is only ONE thing you can do, and that applies ONLY to your home network, and that is to minimize the number of computers and applications (trains) on your network. The ideal and best performance in your home is ONE computer, running ONE application, which results in one train. One computer with one application means only one train is crossing the bridge, no merging traffic, and no sharing the data pipe in and out of your house. If you are using a wireless connection, the same applies, one computer with one application, otherwise you get hit with the party line effect from multiple connections sharing the access point transmitter. Your neighbors using wireless COUNT since they have at least 2 transmitters just as you do, and you have to wait for the line to clear from their traffic, just as they have to wait for you. The solution is simple, revert to hardwire instead of wireless (get rid of the party line in your home) and limit user traffic to ONE computer running ONE application. Anything else added, computers and/or applications trying to use the data pipe, and you hurt yourself in your own house by sharing the bridge. And THAT is as far as you can go. Everything else on the network starting with the modem in your router connecting you to your ISP is beyond your control. You can ONLY control what happens on your side of the modem. OK, class over. Do you understand WHY you are experiencing a slowdown? By the way, a "ping" is simply a measurement of transit TIME from you to send and receive a packet of data from a distant target computer or server. A better measure is to use trace route (tracert.exe). Ping just tells you total time for a round trip, while tracert gives you the times for each link in the chain from one IP address (yours, assigned by your ISP) to another IP address somewhere else. Open a command window and at the prompt type in this:

tracert microsoft.com

What you will see is a series of lines that indicate every link between you and microsoft and the times for a packet to travel from one link to the next. You could manually initiate a ping like this:

ping microsoft.com

The difference between these two is ping simply gives you the aggregate total time, while tracert gives you the individual details for each link between you and microsoft.