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."
Bake sale (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe you could hold a bake sale and offer free wifi for all your customers. Just give them places to sit.
Been there done that... (Score:2, Interesting)
Here are the results:
Vendors were tested with 30 then 60 wireless clients and 1 then 2 access points. So, 1 AP with 30 clients, 1 AP with 60 clients, 2 APs with 30 clients and 2 APs with 60 clients.
1: Cisco - Somewhat surprising. Great client density/bandwidth. Good load balancing between APs. Good management interface.
2: Trapeze (now Juniper) - Great client density/bandwidth (just a little slower (read less bandwidth to client, and just slightly less) than Cisco). Good load balancing between APs. Buy the extra Ringmaster management software.
3: Aruba - Significantly slower than Cisco and Trapeze. Good load balancing between APs. Good management interface.
4: Meru - Significantly slower than Cisco, Trapeze and Aruba. They did not have a network engineer available for the test to be present and we were unable to schedule another test before our purchase window closed.
We were going to test Xirrus but the rep we were working with left the company I believe in the middle of scheduling. We looked at Ruckus but were unable to schedule them.
These tests were performed in the spring of 2010. So products may have changed somewhat. You should be able to get demo hardware from any decent rep. We ultimately went with Trapeze after we put everything out to bid. Before that I was sure we were going to get Cisco gear but Cisco came in at twice the cost as Trapeze. We are deploying 128 APs without any issues. Client roaming and bandwidth are great (our primary requirements). All in all no complaints. Certainly liked the price point. Hope that helps!
Something to consider: (Score:5, Interesting)
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.