Setup and testing notes
Equipment setupiNexQ 54G Wireless access point (HR054g)
iNexQ 54G Wireless cardbus adapter PCMCIA (MR054g - 802.11g)
Netgear RP314 Wireless Router with 4-port switch
Buffalo Air Station WLI-PCM-L11GP Wireless PCMCIA card - 11Mbps (802.11b)
Advent 750MHz laptop with 256MB RAM (for both Wireless cards)
Testing procedure
The basic test was to see how well both iNexQ products interacted with one another from various distances. The Buffalo 802.11b card was also used to gauge the Access Point's interoperability between speeds and standards.
TEST 1 - The initial test took place with the laptop equipped with PCMCIA Wireless cards in the same room as the iNexQ HR054g Access Point, at a distance of no more than 10 feet with a clear line of sight between the card and point.
TEST 2 - As the access point was located in an upstairs bedroom, the second test took place in the lounge, which entailed traversing through a ceiling. The distance between the two was reckoned to be just over 20 feet.
TEST 3 - The last test, and also the toughest, was at the back of the garden. The signal had to travel through two thick internal walls, an outer wall and through to the laptop or AP. The distance was reckoned to be in excess of 50 feet. On all occasions, the Access Point was setup on a ledge that was free from other potential interference. The antenna was adjusted to provide the best possible signal on all three counts.
The test file was a 401.36MB avi movie. The file size was divided by the time taken to calculate throughput. An internal server was setup to allow high-speed transfers. As security is of primary concern these days, testing was also undertaken with 128-bit WEP security (Wireless Equivalent Privacy) to see if enabling it had any impact on performance.
Just to ensure that transfers were consistent over a larger file size, a~ 1.4GB file was transferred between both iNexQ products, Wirelessly, of course.
No problems to report. Transfer speed remained a consistent 1500Kbps+ over the entire duration. This'll give you an insight into possible transfer speeds. The PCMCIA card features a Turbo function that did very little, if anything, to increase the overall throughput. That's a shame, as other competing solutions can often boost theoretical speeds up to 72Mbps and beyond.
