Editors' Choice
Awarding an Editors' Choice award in this story's Enterprise category was not an easy decision. We really liked both the Cisco Aironet 350 Series and the Lucent Orinoco AP-1000. After weighing all the evidence, we reached the conclusion that the Orinoco AP-1000 offered the best features and performance mix, thus earning our Editors' Choice (with Cisco nabbing a strong honourable mention). The Orinoco AP-1000's list of great features, including excellent site-survey and link-testing tools, superior AP and client-configuration managers, and strong performance, are the chief reasons we put it on top.
PERFORMANCE TESTS
Few Surprises
By Andrew R. Garcia
PC Magazine Australia Labs performed extensive throughput and interoperability testing of the products we reviewed. We found that with a little tinkering, all of these products are interoperable at the highest levels of encryption supported. Though there are some performance differences among the products, we found that the access points are fairly consistent no matter whose client is in use. Building on its reputation for fast wireless performance, the Cisco Aironet 350 Series performed best among the 802.11b products reviewed. Cisco attributes its success to a faster access point processor, improved antenna sensitivity, and tight control at the MAC sublayer. Closer examination of the performance numbers uncovered a disturbing trend: two clients contributed about 92 percent (5.8Mbps/ 6.28Mbps) of the total load, while the other two contributed little. The other products tested showed roughly equal throughput to all four clients. Some performance difference can be attributed to environmental and location differences, but Cisco suspects the poor card performance is due mainly to faulty beta hardware. We could not verify this claim in time for this review.
As we expected, the 3Com AirConnect 11Mbps Wireless LAN Solution and Intel PRO/Wireless 2011 LAN Solution performed similarly; they are both manufactured by Symbol Technologies. The other Symbol product, the Ericsson Wireless LAN 11Mbps DSSS, achieved only 83 percent of the Intel product's score. The use of AP firmware, client firmware, and driver versions older than those employed by the Intel or 3Com products is the likely culprit.
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