WLAN stress test details

Wireless consulting firm Novarum recently completed a large-scale wireless LAN stress test using three vendors’ equipment. Read our story about the test’s troubling conclusions. Following are some of the details of Novarum’s test environment.

Location: Second floor of typical Sunnyale, Calif., office building measuring about 20,000 square feet with a mix of hard-walled offices and cubicles. Testing was conducted from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on normal workdays. Radio-frequency (RF) scans showed access points at neighboring businesses, but at very low power levels.

Infrastructure equipment: Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess 4308 (rebranded Aruba 800, according to Novarum) with software Version 3.1.1.4, and 15 Aruba AP 70; Cisco 4402 Wireless LAN Controller with Versions 4.0.217 and 4.1.185 and 15 Cisco AP1242; Meru Networks MC3000 controller with Version 3.4 and 15 Meru AP208. All access points had two radios, but the test used only the 2.4GHz radio and 802.11g. Chariot Console 4.2 was used to generate traffic for the tests and collect performance statistics. Wildpacket's AiroPeekNX 2.0.3 was the 802.11 packet sniffer, Cognio Spectrum Expert 3.1.67 was used for RF scanning.

Client equipment: A mix of 72 Windows XP notebooks: Lenovo Thinkpad T43, and HP 510 and HP Compaq nc6200. All used the same wireless PC card, the Cisco Aironet 802.11a/b/g Cardbus Adapter, and all ran the Aironet Desktop Utility Version 3.6.0.122, which Novarum says is compatible with Version 5.0 of Cisco Compatible Extensions (CCX). Notebooks were spread around the offices, cubicles and conference rooms; all stayed in the same locations throughout the tests. For voice tests, 50 Ascom i75 VoIP phones, with Version 1.2.19, and two Cisco 7921g VoIP phones running WLAN firmware ID 4.1.0.85 with CCX Version 4.