Wireless Performance
NOTES:
• SNR readings were taken from the Belkin client application
• Testing was done with a Belkin F5D7010 Cardbus client card in a WinXP Home Dell Inspiron 4100 laptop, unless otherwise noted.
Since the 7130 is the first spec-compliant 802.11g AP to hit the SmallNetBuilder test bench, I started to run many of the tests that I used to check previous draft-11g products. But I quickly discovered that there was not much difference between the 7130's behavior and that of later Broadcom-based 11g products such as Linksys' WRT54G router, which I had previously tested with late draft-11g (6.1) firmware. So I didn't beat on it as much as I was going to, but still gave it a good workout.
Figure 6: Four location 802.11g throughput comparison
(click on the image for a full-sized view)
Figure 6 shows the results of my four-location Chariot throughput test, which are reminiscent of those obtained from other Broadcom-based products such as Linksys' WAP54G and previously-mentioned WRT54G. Range seemed similar to most good 802.11b and 11g products I've tested, but as you can see, the toughest (weakest signal) test location still yielded an average 5.5Mbps throughput - which is equal to the best-case performance of most 11b products.