Wireless Performance, Continued

Although the throughput behavior in the various security modes seemed to improve for both the Belkin and Buffalo Tech cards, the differences were significant enough to not give me a comfortable feeling about the stability of either card's performance. Judge for yourself by looking at Figures 3 - 6 below.

Figure 3: Security mode performance comparison
Buffalo Tech WLI-CB-G54 client - Run 1
(click on the image for a full-sized view)

Figure 4: Security mode performance comparison
Buffalo Tech WLI-CB-G54 client - Run 2
(click on the image for a full-sized view)

Figure 3 shows that in the first run, the combination of WLA2 and Buffalo Tech client produced reductions in average throughput of approximately 8% with WEP128, and 17% with WPA-PSK / TKIP. Average throughput actually increased with WPA-PSK / AES enabled by about 4%, mainly because this mode seemed to eliminate the throughput hopping effect seen in other modes.

The second run shown in Figure 4 produced throughput with less variation in each mode, and more like what I'd expect from previous testing of Broadcom-based products. The main puzzler was the increase in throughput with WEP128 enabled, but I think that's more a function of the normal "hopping" behavior of the Buffalo Tech client.