Wireless Reviews

Throughput vs. Path Loss - Product Comparison

For a product-to-product comparison, I chose four single-band draft 11n routers: the Netgear WNR854T (Marvell TopDog), Linksys WRT350N (Broadcom Intensi-fi) and D-Link DIR-655 (Atheros XSPAN).

The comparison starts out in 20 MHz mode downlink (Figure 14), with the Vision and D-Link maintaining a higher throughput than the Linksys and Netgear as path loss increases (signal level drops).

Figure 14: Throughput vs. Path Loss product comparison - Downlink, 20MHz channel

When running uplink, however (Figure 15), the D-Link's throughput still stays up longer, but the Vision drops below the DIR-655's curve. It should be noted that both the Linksys and the Netgear products stay connected longer, however.

Figure 15: Throughput vs. Path Loss product comparison - Uplink, 20MHz channel

A similar pattern is seen when switching to 40 MHz channel mode. Running downlink (Figure 16) the Vision and DIR-655 still have superior performance at lower signal levels. But note that the DIR-655 has the least throughput boost at high signal levels (low path loss) from running channel-bonded.

Figure 16: Throughput vs. Path Loss product comparison - Downlink, 40MHz channel

When running uplink with channel bonding, the Linksys WRT350N gets the least boost at high signal levels, but the DIR-655 maintains its throughput longer than the others. It does, however, abruptly disconnect significantly sooner than the other products.

Figure 17: Throughput vs. Path Loss product comparison - Uplink, 40MHz channel

Use the Wireless Charts to generate other comparisons.