A Practical Performance Comparison Between 802.11n and 802.11ac Standards
Tarabuta Radu · The European Proceedings of Social & Behavioural Sciences · 2017
It is well known that the technological performance level of wireless communications in open frequency bands has increased considerably in the last years. Today, many devices that we use is based on wireless communications. This article aims to achieve a practical comparison between 802.11n and 802.11ac performance standards. Practical determinations were made through performance measurements in a wireless communications infrastructure, built by interconnecting pairs of wireless access point equipment, located in close proximity, to ensure maximum performance. The performances of IEEE 802.11ac and 802.11n standards were studied using the traffic measurement method, observing the necessary bandwidth and the response time for different sizes of data packets generated in the testbed communication infrastructure. An important aspect that was taken into consideration refers to the constant monitoring of resources load used for communication processes (CPU load from routers used in test process), to ensure that determinations were not compromised by hardware limitations of the equipment used.