802.11g vs 802.11n

Soldato
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1 Jun 2005
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I'm currently on an OU project course that will involve me doing some work with Wi-Fi and I'm looking for a few answers that will help me with some of the testing that I will run.

I plan on comparing the two Wi-Fi standards by setting up two access points in bridge mode and devising some way of testing each of the main improvements that 802.11n provides over 802.11g but I would like to know if it is possible to use some of the features of 802.11n without the access point just running in 802.11g mode.

For example, to test MIMO is it possible for me to set up both access points to run on 2.4Ghz but still use MIMO, and then compare that to the access points setup to only use 802.11g?

I would also like to compare the quality of going from 2.4GHz to 5GHz but without enabling MIMO (as that could show an increase in signal quality that is due to MIMO and not infact from the frequency change).

Or will I be stuck with doing tests that have all of 802.11n features enabled and on 5GHz and having to compare that to a 802.11g access point on 2.4GHz (which would not be ideal as I may not be able to determine which part of 802.11n is causing the improvement).

Finally, without spending too much can anyone recommend 2 access points that I can set up in bridged mode to perform these tests? The more configurable the better as at a minimum I need to be able to set which standard they use, which channel, and the more options the better.
 
You realise the standards are simply set frequencies for radio transmission right? It's like 97-99fm are radio one. It's just fixed so everyone can find it. Mimo is just a chip that strips data and broadcasts it over several radios because radios only work one way*.

Still if you really want an easy project (or at least one where you'll learn something useful :)) then tomato routers will be easiest, just depends on the budget. Here (sticky at top) & here is all you'll need. Oh and I can't stress how good that forum is since the devs all use it, but that'd probably be more technical than you'll need. At least at first, tinkering becomes addictive.

*technically they can do 2 way, but noise cancellation using a second antenna have only just "officially" been discovered and demonstrated by MIT.
 
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