Ask Slashdot: 802.11n Bake-Off Test Plans? 125
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."
Make the vendors work for you (Score:5, Informative)
Call a meeting of the competitors engineers. It's important you get them all in the room at one time with not too much advance warning of the topic.
Tell them what you think you want. Ask them as a group what you're missing. Then make them as a group come up with an eval plan and cook 'em off according to the plan they come up with.
If you need an independent judge, go to one of the labs that does independent third-party assurance and contract them to provide oversight.
Disclaimer: I've worked for one of those labs for the past 15 years.
Stand back and watch the fun......
Red
My company makes some wifi testing gear. (Score:5, Informative)
We have a box that can emulate up to 128 stations, including wpa, wpa2, etc. It can do
DHCP or static IPs and generate Ethernet, udp, tcp, http, and other higher level protocols,
including IPv6. Multiple systems can be clustered together for additional throughput and
radios. Each system can run on only one channel at once, but can talk to multiple APs
on that channel.
One of our systems can saturate any of the consumer grade APs we have, and some folks have
used it to stress very big systems (conference centers, etc).
Runs on Linux of course!
http://www.candelatech.com/ct520-128_product.php
Thanks,
Ben Greear
Re:Cisco... (Score:5, Informative)
See here [perihel.at]
Re:VeriWave in Portland (Score:3, Informative)
There have been large tests, and it can be done by using Linux boxen that allow one to change out the raw socket to emulate numerous concurrent IP/MAC address pairs concurrently.
Then you decide what kind of duty cycle of transactions will be typical. All surfers checking Facebook? Or are their apps with sockets?
The biggest part of this is the backhaul; what's behind the AP in terms of next hop to a thick layer 2/3 switch/router. How skilled is the person that programmed it?
Are you going to use bi-freq N? If so, many possibilities open up, because you've now got a bunch of fresh 5Ghz channels, and the AP can handle more concurrence. Do you need to preserve session? Xirrus can handle a bunch, but you MUST have sufficient backhaul, or backhaul is a bottleneck for any AP vendor, including XIrrus.
What apps? https pageloads? sftps in a script? What's the profile of your proposed activity? What's the density of radios per proposed diameter?
You ask a lot of questions, but they open up more questions, then more. My recommendation: go with dual-bands that can have concurrent dual band conversations, use a fat backhaul, and encourage users to do the upper-band N by giving them a script, hive, whatever, so that they go upstairs where there's much more room rather than fight for 1, 6, and 11.
My suggestion (Score:0, Informative)
Stop saying 'bake-off'. It makes you sound like a tool.
HTH