How we did it

We tested the XS-3900 in a lab and free-air environment, a parking lot. We used a patched version of AirJack on three clients (a Compaq Presario 700US, Toshiba Satellite Portable and IBM ThinkPad 600e), all running a heavily patched version of AirJack under SuSE Linux 9.3 or RH4, to pound user-association spoofs (in a non-testing scenario this would be used as a distributed denial-of-service attack) to test the maximum number of associations. We used Linksys and Proxim 802.11a/b/g cards (the ThinkPad used 802.11g, while the other two used 802.11a only). We used a Fluke OptiView II portable Windows XP-based unit and AirMagnet software installed on a separate ThinkPad to monitor the associations. We also used the OptiView II to track signal strength and dispersion characteristics in our testing.

Dispersion was tested indoors and in the parking lot, where the XS-3900 was suspended 3 meters in the air. Because the OptiView isn't a calibrated device, our measurements were approximate but consistent.

In the lab, we also used FreeRADIUS and OpenSSL running on a NetFrame 1600 (two Xeon 3.06GHz processors) to test 802.1x and RADIUS proxy authentication. All were configured according to their RFCs.

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We tested the XS-3900 in a lab and free-air environment, a parking lot. We used a patched version of AirJack on three clients (a Compaq Presario 700US, Toshiba Satellite Portable and IBM ThinkPad 600e), all running a heavily patched version of AirJack under SuSE Linux 9.3 or RH4, to pound user-association spoofs (in a non-testing scenario this would be used as a distributed denial-of-service attack) to test the maximum number of associations. We used Linksys and Proxim 802.11a/b/g cards (the ThinkPad used 802.11g, while the other two used 802.11a only). We used a Fluke OptiView II portable Windows XP-based unit and AirMagnet software installed on a separate ThinkPad to monitor the associations. We also used the OptiView II to track signal strength and dispersion characteristics in our testing.

Dispersion was tested indoors and in the parking lot, where the XS-3900 was suspended 3 meters in the air. Because the OptiView isn't a calibrated device, our measurements were approximate but consistent.

In the lab, we also used FreeRADIUS and OpenSSL running on a NetFrame 1600 (two Xeon 3.06GHz processors) to test 802.1x and RADIUS proxy authentication. All were configured according to their RFCs.

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