5. Wireless Tests

Testing Notes:
- All tests were run with the defaults of 54g-Auto mode and 11b protection disabled
- Frame bursting (Broadcom's Xpress technology) was not enabled
- All tests were run with a Linksys WPC54G CardBus client
- Information on how we test can be found here

Wireless performance was in line with other Broadcom-based products I've tested, with uplink speed (Figure 10) dropping off significantly once a few walls get between the WL-HDD and test client. The best-case uplink (STA to AP) speed of 21 Mbps could probably be tweaked upward a bit by enabling Frame Bursting, which is disabled by default, and futzing with the 54g Mode settings.

Figure 10: Four location uplink throughput
(click image to enlarge)

Figure 11 shows downlink speed and tells a slightly different story. Although the best-case Location 1 speed is lower than for uplink, the speeds in other locations are better than their uplink counterparts.

Figure 11: Four location downlink throughput
(click image to enlarge)

I checked Location 1 uplink performance in three security modes with the following results:

Since I consider any difference below 5% within the margin of error of my measurements, I'm happy to report that you should experience no throughput hit when using either WEP or WPA-PSK.