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Ask Slashdot: 802.11n Bake-Off Test Plans?
First time accepted submitter Richard_13 writes "I am seeking a bake-off test plan for an enterprise size deployment of 802.11n wireless. We are about to go to tender for a large scale deployment of 802.11n controllers and APs — and I need a bake-off (benchmarking) test plan that is focused on testing the *maximum number* of clients that an AP can handle before it falls over, in addition to the throughput for each client. We intend to test the latest products from the major vendors, Aruba, Cisco, HP, Xirrus, Ruckus, etc.; not consumer products like Linksys, D-Link or Netgear. Any bake-off test plans or useful links to multi-vendor wireless focused web sites would be greatly appreciated."
Maybe you could hold a bake sale and offer free wifi for all your customers. Just give them places to sit.
In my somewhat limited(but rather painful) experience with attempting to use wifi as a serious connection, one of the issues that cropped up a lot was less with throughput, or with number of clients; but with client software behavior in the face of a glitch.
Dicking around at home and the wifi cuts out for a second? Reload the webpage and quit your whining.
Running your basic "enterprise" client configuration(documents directory is actually on a fileserver, authentication through AD, etc, etc.) and the wifi cuts out? Be prepared for frustratingly erratic appearances of apparently disappearing documents, authentication fails, not automatically reconnecting to the fileserver, Finder just twiddling its thumbs and thinking about infinity until that server either times out or comes back, etc, etc.
Even before any APs show up, you can start identifying the likely areas of sheer pain by using netem, switch jiggery-pokery, or just a $20 consumer AP and flicking your laptop's RF power switch: If your environment has client applications that don't play nicely if the network goes all to suck for a second or two from time to time, wifi deployment is going to be Fun.
Honestly, for most applications where wifi isn't a totally terrible idea(ie. heavily throughput dependent stuff), that would be the big focus of my testing(along with how useful the management tools and interfaces are). High throughput is far less valuable than stable connections.