Wireless Tests
I was very disappointed and surprised at the poor performance that the WRE54G had in my testing. I ran two sets of tests using the test setup shown in Figure 5:
Figure 5: Repeating Performance Test Setup
- The first set had all products within 10 feet of each other in the same room. I ran two sets of one minute IxChariot tests in both AP to STA (downlink) and STA to AP (uplink) directions, one with the client associated to the main AP (blue lightning bolt in Figure 5), the other with it associated to the WRE54G that was bridged to the WRT54G (yellow lightning bolts in Figure 5).
- The second set moved the WRE54G to a room on same level of my home, approximately 30 feet away from AP with two sheetrock walls between AP and WRE54G. The wireless client was also moved to the remote room and located within 6 feet of the WRE54G.
NOTES:
• Testing was done with a Linksys WPC54G V1 (original) Cardbus client card in a WinXP Home Dell Inspiron 4100 laptop unless otherwise noted
• WRE54G was upgraded to 1.04.11 firmware. WRT54G had V2.02.7 firmware. WPC54G ran WinXP 3.30.15.0 driver.
• WEP was disabled
Figure 6: Close range STA to AP (uplink) Direct vs. Repeater throughput
(click on the image for a larger view)
Figures 6 and 7 show the close-range (same room) test results. You can see the 50%-or-so throughput reduction due to the single-radio retransmission overhead of WDS repeating clearly in the uplink tests but not so clearly in the downlink tests due to the high variation in repeated throughput.
The important thing to note is that under best-case conditions, you’ll get a maximum of around 10Mbps throughput when connecting via the WRE54G. Much better than the 2-3Mbps best-case repeated throughput you’d get from an 802.11b repeater, but nowhere near the 20+Mbps buyers unfamiliar with the throughput effects of wireless repeating might expect.
Figure 7: Close range AP to STA (downlink) Direct vs. Repeater throughput
(click on the image for a larger view)
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