Ethernet or WiFi connection to AppleTV?

If wi-fi works for you then great.

In practice I've always found wi-fi less reliable, but increasingly so since recent AppleTV updates.

Many of my devices and AppleTVs are connected over ethernet using mains powerline network adapters which are an excellent option to consider if cabling is tricky.

AC

Ethernet everytime if it's available. WiFi will handle anything the Apple TV needs to do if it's working properly, but ethernet removes the 'if'.

bobwild wrote:

How will we see a difference? How will higher network speeds help the AppleTV performance? AppleTV uses UDP data streams which are fixed and slow, relative to Ethernet and 802.11ac wi-fi.

Not according to this article: Apple TV: TCP and UDP ports and protocols used - Apple Support

....and good thing too; UDP is best confined to live audio/video streaming and VoIP.

Also the relative performance of TCP and UDP depends entirely on the kind of traffic you're sending, e.g. lots of small files, or fewer big files. For tiny files, UDP has the edge, but for larger files TCP wins out (that's a gross generalisation though).

So... like many others, I assumed "Ethernet every time", until I upgraded to the latest Airport Extreme Base Station (which supports up to 802.11ac).

Over Wifi (802.11n at 5GHz from the AppleTV)...

• the AppleTV in my living room (1st floor, 6 inches from the AEBS) gets 279Mb/s.
• the AppleTV in my kitchen (ground floor) gets 205Mb/s

Both of these easily trump the 100Mb/s Ethernet port on the AppleTV (which in practice only manages around 93Mb/s).

Moral: don't assume - test the speeds you're getting from your WiFi, and check which of your ethernet-enabled devices actually have Gigabit Ethernet because even in 2015, many do not.

I 100% agree with Mr. Churchill; if you can suffer a bit of pain with dealing with some driling and wiring, the AppleTV will work 100% as it should. In my case, the WiFi was so inconsistent that it was VERY bad for my blood pressure! A bit of drilling and carefull measuring and an hour of my time was all it took to restore sanity.

While I agree that ethernet is better than wi-fi for dependability, my AppleTv is on wi-fi and is working great.

I have an Airport Extreme and two Airport Expresses that are used to extend the wi-fi and airplay music on speakers. On ethernet I have iMac, Windows Laptop and PS3. On wif-fi I have Linux laptop, Macbook, iPhone, Blackberry, iPod Touch, Wii, and AppleTV. The AppleTV connects to the Airport Extreme wi-fi and works great. The Airport Extreme is in the basment in the middle of the house and the AppleTv is on the main floor at an outside wall about 20 feet from the Airport Extreme. The Airports, Macs, iPhone, iPod Touch and AppleTV are all at the latest software version. The house is has only one close neighbour so the interference from other wi-fi is minimal and weak.

The vast majority of my Apple TV's use Wi-Fi, I have never experienced any problems with them at all. The point being though, not everyone has a perfect networking and if the option is available I would always choose ethernet, even in my case where my Wi-Fi isn't a problem.

Ethernet seems more stable than wifi.

but, honestly, since I changed my router for an Airport extreme, its almost the same.

I have two ATV, the main one is on wifi, and the other is on ethernet, and they both work great.

If Apple ever release an 802.11ac version of the AppleTV (and let's hope so) then you'll really see a difference. I have the new iMac Retina with 802.11ac and get around 500-600Mbps over TCP to my AEBS.

EDIT: ran iPerf301 -s on a Macbook Pro Retina connected via Gigabit Ethernet to the AEBS

then ran iPerf301 -c <Macbook IP Address> -P 20 over 5GHz WiFi channel

Thanks for the info, I didn't know about all the ports used.

I still don't see how increasing the AppleTV connectivity bandwidth would be of any value. The video and audio streams are still a fixed size and much smaller than the current AppleTV bandwidth on ethernet or a good wif-fi connection.

All of my AppleTV activity is video, audio, and pictures. My AppleTV current connects to a Airport Express at 65Mbps. The Airport Express is extending the wi-fi connected to an Airport Extreme via ethernet. The HD video, netflix, audio all stream to the AppleTV at far less than 65Mbps, so I see no need for the AppleTV to have 802.11ac speeds.

Well, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you're talking about streaming content directly from iTunes Store, aren't you? But when I stream content from iTunes running on my Mac, does it not use as much bandwidth as available, therefore able to make the initial connection faster, cache the data faster and so on?

I was speaking in general.

The iTunes store or Netflix would be limited by your ISP bandwidth.

I agree the local content on our macs would buffer faster, but that means it would start playing in a second instead of 2 seconds And I am all for that, so bring on those faster wi-fi devices. 😀

Ethernet absolutely.

AC

They should.

The ATV is the device that requires the strongest wifi since it does video/audio streaming.

How will we see a difference? How will higher network speeds help the AppleTV performance? AppleTV uses UDP data streams which are fixed and slow, relative to Ethernet and 802.11ac wi-fi.