{"id":1445,"date":"2021-09-27T13:46:05","date_gmt":"2021-09-27T13:46:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/?page_id=1445"},"modified":"2021-10-05T16:59:14","modified_gmt":"2021-10-05T16:59:14","slug":"how-we-test-wireless-aps-and-clients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/how-we-test-wireless-aps-and-clients\/","title":{"rendered":"How We Test &#8211; Wireless APs and Clients"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"left\">We use<b>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/qcheck.htm\">NetIQ&#8217;s Qcheck<\/a><\/b>\u00a0to test Wireless Access Points and clients.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Here&#8217;s a diagram of the test setup:<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1446 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/wireless_test.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"309\" height=\"301\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\n<p align=\"left\"><b>Equipment Details:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p align=\"left\">Ethernet Client:<br \/>\n&#8220;Beige box&#8221; Celeron 300A, 128MB, Win98<br \/>\nor<br \/>\n&#8220;Compaq 5451, AMD K-6 500MHz, 92MB, Win98SE<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p align=\"left\">Wireless Client:<br \/>\nCompaq 1650 (Pentium 266), 64MB, Win98SE<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"left\">\n<\/blockquote>\n<h3>Test Details &#8211; Qcheck Method<\/h3>\n<p>Testing is done in recently constructed wood frame two floor residence.\u00a0 Home has heating\/cooling metal ductwork throughout.\u00a0 The Access Point (AP) is placed on a table away from metal cabinets and RF sources in a corner lower level room for all tests.\u00a0 For each of the four conditions, the\u00a0<b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/qcheck.htm\">Qcheck suite of tests<\/a><\/b>\u00a0is run between the wireless client and the Ethernet client.\u00a0<b> \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Starting in June 2001, we started recording Signal, Noise, and Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) results using the ORiNOCO Client Manager Link Test.\u00a0 The SNR numbers will be shown along with the Qcheck test results.\u00a0 The numbers recorded are the &#8220;This Station&#8221; readings.\u00a0 The SNR readings will only be shown in Access Point or Wireless router reviews, since the D-Link DWL1000AP manager program doesn&#8217;t provide SNR readings.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><b>Condition #1:\u00a0<\/b>AP and wireless client in same room, approximately 10 feet apart.\n<p><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><b>Condition #2:\u00a0<\/b>Client in upper floor room directly above AP, approximately 15 feet apart.\u00a0 No metal ductwork between AP and client.\n<p><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><b>Condition #3:\u00a0<\/b>Client on same floor as AP but in another room approximately 50 feet away.\u00a0 Walls, but no metal ductwork between the client and AP antennas.\n<p><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><b>Condition #4:\u00a0<\/b>Client on upper floor at opposite end of residence, approximately 55 feet away.\u00a0 Walls, floor, and probable metal ductwork between AP and client.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3 align=\"left\"><span class=\"HEADER\">Test Details &#8211; File Transfer Method<\/span><\/h3>\n<p align=\"left\">Reviews done before\u00a0<b>January 2001\u00a0<\/b>used either the File Transfer method alone, or the File Transfer method plus some of the Qcheck tests.\u00a0 If Qcheck is not mentioned in the review, then the File Transfer method was the only one used.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Testing is done by copying an approximately 20Mbyte file from client to client using a Windows drag-and-drop file copy.\u00a0 No other significant CPU-intensive applications are running on either machine.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">The file icon is dragged to the destination window and timing is done via stopwatch from the time the file is dropped to the time that the &#8220;Copy Progress&#8221; window disappears.\u00a0Tests are run multiple times and the results are averaged.<\/p>\n<p>Transfer speed is calculated using this formula:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><b><span style=\"font-family: Arial Narrow; font-size: medium;\">Transfer speed (Mbits\/sec)=<br \/>\n(Filesize in MBytes\u00a0 \/ Total Xfer time in seconds) x 8<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p>The fastest transfer speed that this setup can test is about\u00a0<b><span style=\"font-family: Arial Narrow; font-size: medium;\">8Mbps<\/span><\/b>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We use\u00a0NetIQ&#8217;s Qcheck\u00a0to test Wireless Access Points and clients. Here&#8217;s a diagram of the test setup: Equipment Details: Ethernet Client: &#8220;Beige box&#8221; Celeron 300A, 128MB, Win98 or &#8220;Compaq 5451, AMD K-6 500MHz, 92MB, Win98SE Wireless Client: Compaq 1650 (Pentium 266), 64MB, Win98SE Test Details &#8211; Qcheck Method Testing is done in recently constructed wood frame two floor residence.\u00a0 Home has heating\/cooling metal ductwork throughout.\u00a0 The Access Point (AP) is placed on a table away from metal cabinets and RF sources in a corner lower level room for all tests.\u00a0 For each of the four conditions, the\u00a0Qcheck suite of tests\u00a0is run <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5596,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1445"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}