Why is RBR 50 faster with ethernet connected computer powered on?

[KDPearson]

I have a Orbi RBR 50+Satelite Mesh network with GB service from Spectrum.  Multiple computers are part of my home intranet, but only one computer is connected by ethernet cable directly to the Orbi RBR 50.  One day I noticed that the wifi connected computers surf the internet and intranet noticably faster when the one computer physically connect is powered on.

I've done nothing to set that one computer to support the orbi, but both my wife and I have observed a speed difference.

Question:  Is there a reason why a ethernet connect computer powered on would make the Orbi router work better?

I figure it might be some built in Netgear or Windows feature.

Thanks,

Kent

[Retired_Member]

are you asking about the different types of connections?  Typically ethernet provides a faster connection than wifi.

I guess I don't understand the part about 'powered on'.  I wouldn't think a pc regardless of how it was connected would have any affect on other pc's in the network.  just a guess.

[KDPearson]

I'm literally talking about if the connect computer is powered on all the wifi connected computers recieve information faster than if the connected computer is turned off.  It has gotten so that if my wifi is a little slow on my wifi connected laptop, I'll go over and just turn on my ethernet connected computer for no other purpose than to speed up the wifi.  The ethernet connected computer just sits idle but seems to make a wifi speed difference.

Someone may ask if I've bothered to measure the difference.  I haven't had time nor inclination, but maybe I should.

[CrimpOn]

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@KDPearson wrote:

One day I noticed that the wifi connected computers surf the internet and intranet noticably faster when the one computer physically connect is powered on.

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"Twilight Zone" material for sure.  It would be helpful to have some sort of experimental results to augment "feels faster".

[KDPearson]

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@CrimpOn wrote:

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@KDPearson wrote:

One day I noticed that the wifi connected computers surf the internet and intranet noticably faster when the one computer physically connect is powered on.

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"Twilight Zone" material for sure.  It would be helpful to have some sort of experimental results to augment "feels faster".

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I noticed this odd behavior by accident.  I was doing a bunch of document scanning between my wifi connected laptop and wifi connected printer/scanner.  Each page was taking a couple of minutes.  So I decided to listen to some music in the house while performing this scanning chore.  The ethernet connected computer acts as my music server to my stereo.  Once I turned the ethernet connected computer on, then suddenly the wifi scanning process dropped from 2-3 minutes per page to 10-20 seconds.  I mentioned this to my wife who had been complaining about the slowness of the VPN connection to her office.  We tried turning on ethernet connected computer while she is on VPN over wifi connected laptop, suddenly the VPN is fast.

I know a little about networking (but I'm not an expert) and this system behavior makes no sense to me.  I figure it may be a feature of Orbi and/or Windows that I'm unaware of.  I thought I would ask so that I understood my system/intranet better.

Thanks.

[Retired_Member]

what if you unplug the pc (erthernet) from the orbi and see how the other wifi computers react?

[KDPearson]

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@Retired_Member wrote:

what if you unplug the pc (erthernet) from the orbi and see how the other wifi computers react?

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I guess I could. Easy enough to unplug it.  Not sure I see why 1. plugged in but turned off would behave differently than 2. unplugged. 

That is unless my ethernet connected computer is generating networking traffic when turned off.  I do scan it regularly for malware/root kits/etc and I don't believe it to be infected.  Unplugging is something I will test tho.

Overall, I'm happy I found this speed boost to wifi.  I never felt the wifi was as fast as it should be, but I have a lot of devices connected to my router (both ethernet AND wifi).  I just assumed all the traffic from the many devices put a burden on the Orbi.  My research indicated that once you approach 25 devices consumer routers struggle.  I setup a static network (which has helped the speed) but I do have 15-40 devices (including MoCA devices) depending upon what is turned on at any particularly moment.

It just seems odd that this one device being turned on gives the network such a performance boost.