jdainen

This is not quite a scientific test, but I decided I wanted to see the difference between my various cards that I have.

The test computer is a Compaq Armada m700, 1 gig, 256 mb, 20 gig hard drive and windows xp. I updated it with all the latest MS patches and fixes before I started.

The cards:
AT&T Wireless Notebook Adapter 11g. This was the cheapest G card on Ebay I could find when I bought it. It has no external antenna jack.

Dell TrueMobile 1150, this has the latest Dell driver which is newer than the Orinco drivers. My next test will be to update this with the Orinco drivers and see if there is any change.

EnGenius NL-2511cd plus ext2 mercury. I just got this off of ebay. I though I was buying a non-mercury card. The seller forgot to mention the little mercury part on the end of the name when I asked.

This is not going to be a direct apples to apples test, because I have had the dell for a while and I have a 5 db antenna for it. For the new EnGenius, I bought 7db antennas for it, but I thought the results were interesting enough to still post them.

First test: Living Room Table Test

Name---------- No Ext ------- Ext Ant --------- 2Ext Ant
AT&T __________ 5
________________3 wep
________________2 open

Dell____________4_____________5
_______________1 wep_________1 wep
_______________3 open________4 open

EnGenius________2_____________17_____________18
_______________2 wep_________8 wep__________8 wep
_______________0 open_________9 open_________10 open

No Ext - means no external antenna attached
Ext Ant - means 1 external antenna attached
2Ext Ant - means 2 external antennas attached

This was interesting because the Dell with an Antenna did no better than the AT&T without the external antenna. (I even tried moving the Antenna around for the Dell to see if that would change the results, but it didn't)Notice though they did pick up different wlans.

Also note there isn't a whole lot of difference between 1 or 2 antennas for the EnGenius.




Second Test: Parking Lot

For the next test, I drove my truck around my complex parking lot. I tried to start and stop in the same spot and go the same speed through out.

Name-----------1Ext Ant----------2Ext Ant
Dell___________36
______________14 wep
______________22 open

EnGenius_______65______________66
______________27 wep__________29 wep
______________38 open__________37 open

Again the EnGenius kicked butt, but remember they had different antennas, so your mileage may vary. Also note, there is again a discrepancy between the weps and opens. Even trying to drive the same path, I got slightly different results!



Conclusions
I'd like to see someone compare the results of using a 5 vs 7db antenna for the same card. The Engenius Mercury Version works great! Though not for Linux at this time.

Finally, don't bother getting a second antenna unless you really want the one extra wlan. I also noticed that people really noticed the extra antenna, so if you want to remain relatively unnoticed stick with one antenna.