Beamforming: The Best WiFi You’ve Never Seen

Chariot At 2.4 GHz

By the time I got to Chariot, I was already 1.5 days into a 2-day testing window. In four hours, my test space and many thousands of dollars of on-loan equipment were going to turn into pumpkins. So, as much as I’d like to tell you there was some technical reason for why I only tested the 7962 against the 1142 with beamforming enabled, the truth is that I ran out of time and had to make a choice. I decided the few hours I had left for Chariot testing would be a battle of the beamforms—on-chip versus on-antenna. Fight!

Quite the difference between TCP and UDP numbers, no? Also, remember that 2.4 GHz tests at close range can show half the TCP throughput speed of 5 GHz. This is why Netgear put its HD/Video wireless kit on the 5 GHz band. No one should be too surprised when Ruckus only manages an average throughput of 67 Mbps at location 1, although this is double what Cisco pulls in. Numbers decline incrementally at locations 2 and 4, with Ruckus showing more of a drop-off. The contenders reverse roles at location 3, with Cisco showing the greater loss over distance.

Down in location 5, both access points are able to hold a connection. The numbers we see here show Cisco hitting about half of the throughput we saw with Zap on 50% tests while Ruckus only falls off by about one-third.