SmallNetBuilder

Test Description

Ixia's IxChariot network peformance evaluation program is used with the test configuration shown in Figure 5 to run tests in each of the test locations. The test notebook is usually a Fujitsu P7120 Lifebook (1.2 GHz Intel Pentium M, 504 MB) notebook running WinXP Pro SP2 with all the latest updates.

The Ethernet client machine varies, but always runs WinXP Home SP2 with the latest updates. The test machines have no other applications running during testing.

Figure 5: Wireless test setup

All routers / APs are generally reset to factory defaults. On wireless routers, the Ethernet client is connected to a router LAN port. All testing is done on the LAN side of the router so that the router's routing performance does not affect wireless performance results.

At each test location, the IxChariot Throughput.scr script (which is an adaptation of the Filesndl.scr long file send script) is run for 1 minute in real-time mode using TCP/IP in both uplink (client to AP) and downlink (AP to client) directions. The only modification made to the IxChariot script is typically to change the file size from its default of 100,000 Bytes to 300,000 Bytes of data for each file send for 802.11g products and to 1,000,000 Bytes for draft 802.11n products.