Connection Type

Connection type describes what medium a user is on — Wi-Fi, a cellular network, or a wired link — and indirectly signals the speed and stability of their experience.

This attribute matters for performance decisions, because a user on a weak cellular network experiences the same page that loads fast on Wi-Fi as slow and stuttering, so without knowing the connection type a speed analysis is incomplete. But it has two serious limits. First, connection-type data comes from a browser API that is not uniform or reliable across browsers, and part of the audience never reports it at all. Second, connection type is not the same as real quality: a fifth-generation cellular network can beat a congested Wi-Fi, so the connection label is a hint, not a bandwidth measurement. Connection type should therefore be read alongside real speed metrics — such as field Core Web Vitals — not in their place.