Wireless Devices for a Wire-Free Business

With enhanced throughput, wireless networks can now do

more tasks like transmission of audio and video streams. We tested three

wireless devices, two 802.11n based routers and one 802.11g based access point.

For testing both routers we set up an isolated network to ensure there was no

other traffic to come and interfere.

D-Link DIR-600



This wireless router from D-Link comes in a small form factor and is

equipped with  lots of  features for a small wireless network. It is based on

IEEE 802.11n draft standard, so you get better throughput, The DIR-600 is also

equipped with advanced security features like Wi-Fi Protection Access (WPA,

WPA2), Wi-Fi Protection Setup (WPS), Stateful Packet Inspection (SIP), VPN

Pass-through, and support for multiple and concurrent IPSec and PPTP

(Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol) sessions for access to a secure corporate

network.

To test this router we created an isolated wireless N

network using two desktop computers, DIR-600, and D-Link wireless USB adapter

DWA-125. We connected one machine to DIR-600 using Ethernet cable while the

other was connected as a wireless device using DWA-125. When we checked TCP

throughput of this wireless connection using 1000 KB of payload it came out to

be 60Mbps which is 20% lower than the Leoxsys router that has also been tested

in this article. In the second test, we transferred 50 MB of heterogeneous data

from one machine to other, where it took just 18 seconds.

Bottomline: Go

for it if you're looking for a low cost router, wihout too many features and

average performance.

Leoxsys LEO-150N-BT



Based on the IEEE 802.11n draft standard, this wireless router comes with

plenty of features that can help users perform more efficiently. LEO-150N-BT

comes with four 10/100 LAN Ports plus a USB 2.0 port for connecting printer or

storage devices. The router comes with a File Server, Print Server, FTP Server,

Bit Torrent Client, and HTTP/FTP Download.

All this means that there is no need to attach physical

wires between your printer and the storage device; file transfer and printing

can be done wirelessly. The router also allows FTP transfer over Internet. One

just needs to configure inbuilt Dynamic DNS functionality. On top of all this,

the router also allows the IT manager to create users and give them customized

access rights plus schedule downloads. Moving from added functionalities to

security features, LEO-150N-BT comes with Wi-Fi Protection setup (WPS), WEP,

WPA2, WDS mode and live parental control using OpenDNS. It also has a feature

called WMM which improves audio/video streaming.

A comparison of the two wireless routers for TCP throughput and data transfer. The routers were tested on an isolated network.

To check performance of LEO-150N-BT we again carried out

two tests in an isolated n network. We first checked TCP throughput using 1000

KB of payload and it came out to be 75 Mbps which is 15 Mbps more than the

D-Link router tested in similar conditions. In the second test, we transferred

50 MB of data from one machine to another with the first machine connected via

Ethernet and the other wirelessly. Here, the time taken to complete the transfer

was 18 seconds, same as that taken by the D-Link router.

Bottomline: Good

performance, but go for it only if you need all those features.