Wi-Fi understates your NBN line speed — a wired ethernet test shows what your connection actually delivers.
A Wi-Fi speed test measures your wireless link, not your NBN line. When you run a test over Wi-Fi, the number you see is limited by distance from the router, walls, interference from neighbouring networks, and the wireless capability of your phone or laptop — all of which can strip away speed the NBN is actually delivering to your home. Testing over a wired ethernet cable removes those variables. It connects your device straight to the modem, so the result reflects what your NBN connection carries to the premises. The ACCC's Measuring Broadband Australia program measures fixed-line performance using wired connections at the router for exactly this reason — to isolate the line from in-home wireless conditions (2026 methodology). If your wired test hits your plan's tier but your Wi-Fi test is far slower, the gap is your home wireless, not your NBN plan. If the wired test is also slow, the problem sits with the line, the technology type, or busy-hour congestion — and that is worth investigating further.
Running a fair comparison takes about five minutes and needs one ethernet cable.
Connect your laptop or PC directly to a LAN port on your NBN modem-router with an ethernet cable.
Turn off Wi-Fi on the connected device so it cannot fall back to wireless mid-test.
Pause downloads, cloud sync, and streaming on all devices so nothing else consumes the line.
Record download, upload, and ping from the wired test as your line-speed baseline.
Reconnect Wi-Fi, stand where you normally use it, and run the same test to see how much your wireless drops.
The difference between your wired and Wi-Fi results points to where the problem lives.
Your NBN line is delivering. The bottleneck is your home wireless — router placement, distance, or an older device's Wi-Fi.
The line itself is underperforming. Look at your connection technology, plan tier, or evening congestion.
This pattern points to busy-hour congestion, which the ACCC tracks as typical evening speed against advertised speed.
Wi-Fi loses speed for reasons that have nothing to do with your NBN plan. Radio signal weakens with distance and every wall it passes through, so a test from the far end of the house reads lower than one beside the router. Older devices cap out on older Wi-Fi standards — a phone limited to an earlier wireless generation cannot report the full line speed even when the NBN delivers it. Neighbouring networks and household devices share the same airwaves and compete for it, which is why Wi-Fi often slows in the evening when more devices are active. The ACCC Measuring Broadband Australia program deliberately measures at the router over a wired connection to remove these wireless variables from its published speed figures (2026), which is the same reason a wired test gives you the honest line-speed number. This is not about buying new hardware — it is about knowing which number to trust before you contact your provider. If you want the full remediation checklist once you have isolated the cause, that is a separate step.
The rules on this page follow the official requirements published by ACCC Measuring Broadband Australia. Always confirm current rules and fees with the authority before you book.