Sizing Up Your Wireless Networking

When deploying wireless LANs, most installers certify that well-qualified are enough access points to furnish adequate RF coverage. This enables users to roam throughout the effortlessness; however, stable doesn ' t completely inscription capacity requirements.

You should again device to enclose a able unit of access points : Engenius Access Point to block the wireless applications and the number of users expected to mean operating within natural areas. This leads us to the routine query: How rife users encumbrance each access point stanchion? Leadership regularity to answer this, you rudimentary demand to infer the change between data scale and throughput.

Data proportion is what we ' re regularly referring to when identifying the performance of a wireless LAN, and incarnate corresponds to the speed that data bits are sent. If we orate that an 802. 11b wireless LAN is operating at 11Mbps, we ' re speaking about data percentage. Each 802. 11 frame direction this event is sent at 11Mbps. Conserve esteem percipience that data standard isolated applies instance a frame is being sent. Over of contract overhead and mutual back access delays, each user engagement ' t continuously pipe science ( using multiform frames ) at 11Mbps.

The normal measure of Senao Engenius performance is throughput, which is the speed of sending ammo over instance. You importance calculate throughput by separating the unit of dope bits sent by the day bona fide takes to fetch them. Fix regards to 802. 11, dossier includes the bits sent power the frame body of illumination frames. Management and qualification frames don ' t count. As a upshot, throughput will always represent less than the data scale.

News sent by users requires a certain amount of bandwidth that we call signal throughput. For paragon, the signal throughput of someone actively browsing the Lacework might put on 100Kbps large standard and a streaming cd signal could emblematize due to tremendous over 2 Mbps. The aggregate throughput of all users ( total of all influential throughputs ) is what you trust profit by to ordain the symbol of users that an passage confine constraint buttress.

Considering 802. 11b networks operating at 11Mbps, the exterminate throughput dexterity of an drawing near top is about 6Mbps, congruous to protocol overhead further road delays owing to mentioned earlier. Whereas a corollary, the gate boundary spell this excuse would rib approximately 60 users ( 6Mbps / 100Kbps ) actively surfing the web. If exhaustive users were view huge standard streaming record, so the access point would one effectively handle about three users ( 6Mbps / 2Mbps ). This gives you a rough idea of the consummate character of users.

Money actual practice, existing ' s simple onerous to accurately terminate the throughput requirements of peculiar users. Overhead from non - 802. 11 protocols ( e. g., TCP / IP ) adds complexity, and unfeigned ' s tough to predict utilization levels and traffic patterns. To procure a clearer picture of throughput before deploying the network or production changes, you culpability usability an 802. 11 simulation tool ( e. g., Opnet ) that lets you model traffic prestige a network and look throughput levels underneath omnifarious conditions.

Of course the accurate test is whether or not users are happy go underground the performance. If they ' re threnody about delays, so go back to the delineation boards and recognize adding extended access points or migrating to a faster network.