Wireless Perf. - Mixed mode
My last round of tests checked the handling of simultaneous 802.11b and 11g traffic. Again using Chariot, I set up a test using two client pairs. The reference 802.11g test pair for each test was a WinXP Home Dell Laptop with NETGEAR WAG511 Cardbus card to Win98SE Ethernet client. The second pair used a WinXP Home Compaq Presario 1650 Laptop with various 802.11b cards to a different Win98SE Ethernet client. I tested the following cards:
- Linksys WPC11 v3 (Intersil PRISM III)
- NETGEAR WAB501 (Atheros 5001X ) [forced to 11b mode]
- ORiNOCO Gold (Agere Systems)
- D-Link DWL-650+ (TI ACX100)
In each test, I started the 11g card first, then kicked in the 802.11b card. Both cards then run simultaneously for awhile, with the 11g card stopping first to let the 11b card finish by itself. The AP was set to its default mode for all tests. Figures 20-23 show the results.
Figure 20: Mixed mode test - WAG511 & Linksys WPC11 v3
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Figure 21: Mixed mode test - WAG511 & NETGEAR WAB501 ( forced to 11b)
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Figure 22: Mixed mode test - WAG511 & ORiNOCO Gold
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Figure 23: Mixed mode test - WAG511 & D-Link DWL-650+
(click on the image for a full-sized view)
As I'd expect, the two Atheros-based cards had the best cooperation, nicely sharing bandwidth. The ORiNOCO card (with the oldest 11b chipset) had the worst effect on 11g throughput, seriously knocking it down while both were running. But the card it looks like you don't want to use with the FWAG is the Linksys WPC11 v3, based on the Intersil PRISM III chipset. As Figure 18 shows, its average throughput when running by itself tended to be around 3Mbps.