Performance

I used a Symphony HRF PC card as the wireless test partner, and put the pair through my usual Qcheck test suite, with the following results:

 (Details of how I tested can be found here.) 

As expected, the Transfer Rate (throughput) numbers were lower than those of 802.11b products, and of course, lower than the 1.6Mbps maximum data rate number (which equates to the 802.11b's 11Mbps spec).

But while running my tests, I happened to step outside onto my porch and noticed that the connection didn't immediately die, which happens with virtually every 802.11b product that I test.  Intrigued, I ran the Maestro Cordless Connection test and was told that the connection was Excellent.  "Excellent, huh?" I thought, and decided to see just how "Excellent" the connection was.

What I found blew me away!  With the Gateway on the lower, below-ground floor of my home in the same location that I use for testing all wireless AP's and routers, I was able to listen to a 128kbps MP3 file opened from one of my LAN machines until the signal got marginal (not disappeared) about 120-140 feet away.  That location was through earth, two walls, and a floor!

I then repeated the test, this time with an ORiNOCO Gold card and D-Link DWL1000AP Access Point, no WEP, auto rate set, and the AP right next to the Proxim.  This time, as soon as I went outside, the signal died...the sounds of "I Wanna be Sedated" along with it.

I went back to the Proxim setup and experimented, listening to a Cnet 20kbps stream on a Windows Media Player, and running Qcheck Transfer Rate tests.  Qcheck said that I had an approximately 200kbps connection at about 120 feet away and I was still receiving the network stream at the edge of reception at about a 20kbps rate at about 140-160 feet!  Unbelievable!

I also tried a Microwave oven test. I carried the Proxim-equipped laptop, which was still running the Cnet stream, to my kitchen and ran a Qcheck Transfer Rate test, which reported a rate of approximately 200kbps.  I then turned on the microwave for 15 seconds and ran the test again, this time getting between 75 to 90kbps.  I repeated the test with the 802.11b setup and found that a 2.5Mbps rate without the microwave got knocked down to about 60kbps with the microwave running.  Of course the 20kbps Cnet stream didn't skip a beat in either case.

To round out the testing, I switched the Gateway to Wireless Routing mode and ran the tests:

These results show no penalty for going through the router vs. the bridge.  I couldn't run any WAN-LAN or the LAN-WAN UDP tests because Qcheck needs ports mapped through a NAT firewall to run them and, as I said earlier, the Gateway doesn't give you any way to do that.

Summary

Ok, ok, I know you're probably thinking "Hey Tim!  Wake up!  The wireless networking battle is over and HomeRF lost.  Why should I even think of buying any of this stuff that won't work with 802.11b?"  Well, if you have 802.11b and it's working fine for you, then you shouldn't!  But if you've tried 802.11b and found that it didn't reach as far as you needed it to or didn't work reliably, then you have nothing to lose (assuming you buy from a retailer that allows returns) and the convenience of a reliable wireless network to gain!

Yes, HomeRF runs about 6 to 8 times more slowly than 802.11b under best data rate conditions.  And that 500kbps or so of bandwidth can get eaten up pretty quickly if you have more than a few network clients and their favorite thing to do is watch streaming videos, or do large file downloads.  But if most of your network traffic is web browsing, email, small file transfers, instant messages and other non bandwidth intensive applications,  the increased reliability and range of an HomeRF based network might be worth the trade off a little slower web-browsing experience.  If you decide to go for it, my advice is to use the Gateway in Bridge mode and buy a router to handle your Internet connection sharing if you plan on gaming, using VPN, or doing anything besides web browsing, email, and file downloads.

If HomeRF 2.0 raises the speed to 802.11b levels, keeps the range, maintains the resistance to interference (microwaves and 2.4GHz phones), and sustains the price advantage of HomeRF vs. 802.11b, then home and small-office users looking for a robust and easy to use wireless networking experience may have a real alternative to 802.11b!

The bottom line for me is that I can't wait to get my hands on HomeRF 2.0 stuff to try it out!  I'll also be bugging Proxim for PocketPC drivers for their PC card, (a CompactFlash adapter with PocketPC drivers would be even better). That way, I could listen to Internet radio streams or my MP3 files virtually anywhere in my house or yard, beyond the range of any 802.11b products that I've seen!