Wireless Reviews

Wireless Performance - 11g client

As noted earlier, I also repeated the six location tests with the Intel 5300 AGN set to act as an 802.11g adapter. Figure 13 shows a composite IxChariot plot of the six test location runs, where we once again see high throughput variation in the lower signal test locations.

Figure 13: Wireless throughput - G client, router 20 MHz mode, downlink

Location D has the highest variation, followed by Location F. The good news is that average throughput in Locations E and F has gone from unusable with the adapter set to draft 11n mode, to 2-3 Mbps with the adapter set to 11g mode. This would be good enough to support web browsing and email and even probably audio streaming.

Uplink performance with the 11g mode adapter was much more well-behaved (Figure 14).

Figure 14: Wireless throughput - G client, router 20 MHz mode, uplink

For two last data points, I ran a quick Location A and D tests using another notebook, this time with an Intel 2915ABG mini-PCI card inside (this is not a draft 11n adapter). The composite trace in Figure 15 combines individual up and downlink runs with a third simultaneous up / downlink run in Location A. The downlink run starts out with high variation, but then settles down to a smoother, higher level. Uplink speed, however, retains high variation throughout the run.

Figure 15: Wireless throughput - Intel 2915ABG client, router 20 MHz mode, Location A

The Location D plot in Figure 16 also shows some high uplink variation, but with 16 Mbps of average throughput over the 1 minute test.

Figure 16: Wireless throughput - Intel 2915ABG client, router 20 MHz mode, Location D