11. Wireless Tests - MIMO comparisons

• WPN824 RangeMax...
• • Newegg.com
  • $69.99
• • NextWarehouse.com
  • $59.84
• • Directron
  • $59.99
• • Mwave.com
  • $65.52
• • TECH ON WEB
  • $66.71

So what we've learned so far is that settings matter for RangeMax gear, and that RangeMax can provide a throughput boost throughput over normal Super-G products. Now, it's time to take a look at indoor and outdoor throughput vs. range performance.

First, here are the usual four location downlink (Figure 16) and uplink (Figure 17) IxChariot plots for the combination of WPN824 and WPN511 CardBus card so that you can see throughput variation. As per what we learned above, these plots were done in Auto108 mode and XR and AR disabled, i.e. the default settings.

Figure 16: Indoor RangeMax Throughput vs. Location - Downlink
(click on image to enlarge)

Figure 17: Indoor RangeMax Throughput vs. Location - Uplink
(click on image to enlarge)

What kind of surprised me here was how "fuzzy" the plots were, i.e. the amount of short term throughput variation. As a point of comparison, here's the uplink plot (Figure 18) from my review of the Linksys SRX products, which use Airgo's True MIMO chipset.

Figure 18: Linksys SRX Four Location Throughput test - Uplink
(click on image to enlarge)

If you open the large version of Figures 17 and 18, note the Relative Precision numbers (rightmost column in the table above the plots), which are a measure of the statistical variation of the measured data. The best True MIMO values are an order of magnitute better (lower) than the RangeMax readings. But on the other hand, the RangeMax values, while higher, are more consistent from location to location.

By the way, as is usual with 802.11g gear, response (ping) times taken with Qcheck were a solid 1msec (the smallest that Qcheck can measure).