Benchmark Results: Zap UDP
A lot of streaming media apps gravitate toward the UDP protocol for its faster performance. But the catch with streaming media is that you have very little tolerance for throughput drops. If 20 Mb/s is our expected baseline for HD video, we need to build in a buffer to allow for fluctuations. Because of this, we don’t want to see sustained results dropping under 40 Mb/s, just as a general rule. The only two routers that fail this criterion are the N1 Vision and the two TRENDnet routers, although we again forgive the 654TR since it’s a travel router.
Interestingly, Netgear again edges out the mighty WRT610N in our 5 GHz UDP test. Ruckus clumps in the mid- to upper-80s (hey, there’s nothing wrong with being stuck in the ‘80s). Even the 671BR meets expectations. So it seems that if you’ve got a 5 GHz-capable router, odds are good you’ll be pleased with the streaming media results.