Which
wireless access points are recommended to work with
the Symbol Wireless Networker? -- So far, we've tested
the following with the SWN: Netgear
ME102, Linksys
WAP11, Linksys
BEFW11S4, SMC
2655W, Lucent RG-1000, Apple Airport, D-Link 713P
and SMC Barricade 7004AWBR. They all work, in varying
degrees.
Our
test devices? HP Jornada 548, HP Jornada 520, Compaq
iPaq 3135 and Sony Vaio PCG-F580 (yes, a Win2k laptop...it
was really cool to be able to use the SWN with a CF
PC card adapter with it - installation went very smoothly
btw).
Bottom
line results: The iPaq in general sustained 11Mbs
for all access points tested, the Jornada however, struggled
to sustain 5.5Mbs and we usually saw it drop consistently
to 1Mbs. We really would like to test a 56x series,
but they're quite cost prohibitive so we'll have to
wait for the price to come down a bit more. And HP hasn't
been very responsive to provide any discounts towards
our testing.
Encryption:
We saw performance hits, and in some cases, the handheld
devices were rendered inoperable. For the most part,
the iPaq worked happily with encryption on. The Jornada
stopped working for half the APs we tested with encryption.
Range:
Amazing in the differences we experienced. The SMC
2655W had the best range we found, based in a building
inside a 2nd floor window with trees and bushes around,
signal reached about 200 feet with encryption set to
64bit. The Netgear
ME102 came in a close second, short of a foot or
two. The Linksys
BEFW11S4 measured around 160 feet, the RG-1000 was
about the same and the WAP11
fell the shortest at around 100 feet.
Conclusion:
We came out liking the SMC
2655W and the Netgear
ME102 the best. The iPaq seemed to be the most tolerate
and the strongest with an almost consistent 11Mbs sustained
data rate. The SMC2655W
can support 128bit encryption as opposed to only 64bit
for the Netgear
ME102, but the ME102
supports short radio headers. Which by the way, when
used with a wireless card that supports short radio
headers such as a Cisco Aironet 340, data rates did
improve almost as much as 18%. -
(posted here
11/21/01)
For
optimal results, we recommend using the Symbol Wireless
Networker with WiFi certified access points.
-
(posted here
10/9/01)
WiFi
Certified Products
