- Wireless LANs Get to Work
- Wireless LANs: D-Link DWL-1000AP, Lucent Orinoco AP-1000
- Buffalo AirStation WLA-L11
- Cisco Aironet 350 Series
- D-Link DWL-1000AP
- Ericsson Wireless LAN 11Mbps DSSS, Intel PRO/Wireless 2011 LAN Solution, 3Com AirConnect
- Intermec 2102 Corporate Access Point
- Linksys Instant Wireless WAP11
- Lucent Orinoco AP-1000
- Lucent Orinoco RG-1000
- Performance Tests: Few Surprises
- Five-GigaHertz Gusto
- It's In There
PC Magazine Labs performed extensive throughput and interoperability testing of the products we reviewed. We found that with a little tinkering, all of these products are interoperable at the highest levels of encryption supported. Though there are some performance differences among the products, we found that the access points are fairly consistent no matter whose client is in use.
Building on its reputation for fast wireless performance, the Cisco Aironet 350 Series performed best among the 802.11b products reviewed. Cisco attributes its success to a faster access point processor, improved antenna sensitivity, and tight control at the MAC sublayer. Closer examination of the performance numbers uncovered a disturbing trend: Two clients contributed about 92 percent (5.8 Mbps/6.28 Mbps) of the total load, while the other two contributed little. The other products tested showed roughly equal throughput to all four clients. Some performance difference can be attributed to environmental and location differences, but Cisco suspects the poor card performance is due mainly to faulty beta hardware. We could not verify this claim in time for this review.
As we expected, the 3Com AirConnect 11Mbps Wireless LAN Solution and Intel PRO/Wireless 2011 LAN Solution performed similarly; they are both manufactured by Symbol Technologies. The other Symbol product, the Ericsson Wireless LAN 11Mbps DSSS, achieved only 83 percent of the Intel product's score. The use of AP firmware, client firmware, and driver versions older than those employed by the Intel or 3Com products is the likely culprit.
Our Editors' Choice, the Lucent Orinoco AP-1000, showed mediocre performance. Anecdotal testing indicates that it suffers greater performance degradation with WEP encryption enabled (16.8 percent degradation) than does the Aironet 350 (0 percent) and the Symbol Technologies products (the 3Com, for example, suffered only a 9.4 percent degradation). According to Lucent, the Orinoco AP-1000 will show this behavior at high loads and when connected to the clients at the 11-Mbps rate. Of the 40-bit consumer-class products, the D-Link DWL-1000AP showed the highest throughput, while the Buffalo AirStation WLA-L11 finished lasttrailing D-Link by 34 percent. The AirStation access point was the least stable of the APs tested. The AirStation's clients would periodically lose radio connectivity with the AP long enough to cause the test to abort. Inexplicably, we found this less likely to occur when the AirStation had been running for a period of at least 15 minutes.
We performed extensive interoperability tests among all vendors at the highest possible level of encryption. After some modifications (see Inside PC Labs), we achieved encrypted wireless communications in all products tested. Additional details on testing as well as our extensive interoperability throughput performance results and analysis may be found in our online edition. To measure throughput, we used Chariot 3.2 from NetIQ Corp. (www.netiq.com) and its filesndl test suite, with the clients simultaneously downloading uncompressible data from the server for a two-minute interval. The scores shown depict the mean of three consecutive tests.