Routing Performance

Testing and analysis by Tim Higgins

Routing performance for the 750H using our standard test method is summarized in Table 3. Note that these results are with Network Turbine hardware acceleration enabled (default). Disabling this acceleration knocked the simultaneous up/down routing test down to around 260 Mbps.

The Maximum Simultaneous Connections test didn't max out, even at our new Win 7 imposed lower limit. The best I was able to get after three runs was 29,666.

Table 3: Routing throughput

The IxChariot plot for the routing tests shows very stable throughput.

ESR750H Routing throughput IxChariot plot summary

Storage Performance

Testing and analysis by Tim Higgins

I ran quick Windows filecopy tests using the standard NAS testbed to the 750H with a WD MyBook 3.0 drive formatted in FAT32 and NTFS attached. The results are summarized in Table 4, along with the Cisco-Linksys E4200V2/EA4500, which is the current router storage performance champ. I also included two other "N750 routers", the NETGEAR WNDR4000 and Cisco Linksys EA3500.

Table 4: Router filecopy performance comparison - MB/s

The 750H did pretty well for FAT32. But if you like your drives formatted NTFS, you're going to be waiting longer for file copies.

Wireless Performance - Overview

All wireless testing and analysis by Tim Higgins

The ESR750H is not Wi-Fi Certified. It defaults to Auto 20/40 mode on both bands on power-up. As Scott noted, both radios are unsecured by default and following the setup wizard will not result in a robustly secure connection. As noted earlier, I could not get my Win 7 client to recognize that WPS was available, so had to manually set security to WPA2/AES for all testing.

I ran 40 MHz Coexistence and Fat channel intolerant tests to see if the 750H properly refrained from switching into 40 MHz bandwidth mode. It didn't, even after I waited three minutes to see if it would switch to 20 MHz.

The router properly stayed in 20 MHz bandwidth mode when the client had its Fat Channel Intolerant bit set, however. And it stayed there until I changed the channel, even after I changed the bit back to disable.

I used our Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 in a Lenovo X220i notebook running Win 7 Home Premium SP1 (64 bit) standard test client for all testing except testing the 5 GHz radio in two stream mode. For that, I used our other standard test client, an Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200 in a Acer Aspire 1810T notebook running Win 7 Home Premium SP1 (64 bit). 1.3.4 firmware was loaded in both routers for all testing.

As is our standard practice, all tests were run using WPA2/AES encrypted connections with Channel 1 used for 2.4 GHz tests and Channel 36 for 5 GHz.

Each entry in the Benchmark Summary below shows the average of throughput measurements made in all test locations.

EnGenius ESR750H Benchmark Summary

Table 5 summarizes the highest wireless throughput measured out of all locations in the 20 MHz mode test runs. In most cases, highest throughput was measured in Location A. Note that the Dn/Up result is for simultaneous up and downlink tests in Location A. There are no 2.4 GHz 3 stream results because the router doesn't support that mode.

These results show throughput that skews toward the middle of the pack for 802.11n routers for two streams and toward the bottom for three-stream. They also don't show higher throughput in the simultaneous up/down tests, which other N routers usually show. There also isn't much gain in throughput between two and three stream N and, in fact, the numbers trend lower. You'll see the reason for this shortly.

Table 5: Highest Throughput, 20 MHz mode

Table 6 summarizes highest 40 MHz mode throughput. Here, 2.4 GHz performance is toward the top of the chart for all dual-band routers. But when we switch to 5 GHz, the router falls into the cellar.

Table 6: Highest Throughput, 40 MHz mode

Simply put, this is not a great router for 5 GHz use. This will become even more evident when we next look at comparative performance for each set of tests.

Introduction, Inside Setup, Features / In Use Features-USB, QoS, VPN, Parental, Log Performance - Routing, Storage, Wireless Overview Wireless Perf- 2.4 GHz/2, 5 GHz/2, 5 GHz/3, Closing

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