14. Mixed Mode - 11b

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

Although WLAN vendors would have you believe that no one uses 802.11b anymore, interoperability with it is still important. I used an ORiNOCO Gold card to see how 11b and RangeMax mixed. The general effect is the same as I found for 11b and True MIMO - the 11b client suffers the most when both it and RangeMax client are running uplink.

Figure 26: Mixed RangeMax and 11b uplink - RangeMax first
(click on image to enlarge)

Figure 26 shows an uplink run with the RangeMax client starting first. The 824 obviously knows the 11b client is active, with the wildly bouncing throughput of the RangeMax pair showing that it's trying hard - but without much success - to give the 11b STA its share of air time. A test run with the 11b STA starting first also shows the same RangeMax throughput variation.

Figure 27: Mixed RangeMax and 11b downlink - 11b first
(click on image to enlarge)

Figure 27 shows the same RangeMax pair throughput variation while the 11b STA is active when both are running downlink. But this time the 11b STA manages to eke out a little more bandwidth.