Experimental Performance Studies of Laboratory WPA IEEE 802.11b,g PTMP Links

Wireless communications using microwaves are increasingly important, e.g. Wi-Fi. Performance is a very crucial issue, resulting in more reliable and efficient communications. Security is equally very important. Laboratory measurements are made about several performance aspects of Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 b,g WPA point-to- multipoint links. A contribution is given to performance evaluation of this technology under WPA encryption, using available equipments (DAP-1522 access points from D-Link and WPC600N adapters from Linksys). Detailed results are presented and discussed, namely at OSI levels 4 and 7, from TCP, UDP and FTP experiments, permitting measurements of TCP throughput, jitter, percentage datagram loss and FTP transfer rate. Comparisons are made to corresponding results obtained for point-to-point links. Further comparisons are made to corresponding results obtained for WEP links. Conclusions are drawn about the comparative performance of the links.