[Server-devel] Testing and comparing wireless setups.

[David Farning]

As part of the XSCE, we would like to start offering wireless setup guidelines.

Large deployments might be able to afford a site assessment. Small
deployments are left scratching their heads and making decision on
anecdotal references. This results in a bottleneck. Smart and
motivated people are spending time, early in a deployments lifecycle,
on wireless which means other critical task are left undone.

This topic is challenging  because it is complex. Every workload is
different and every electromagnetic environment is different.

My idea is start very simply by assigning a numerical score for
various wireless devices based on simple criteria like throughput,
connection count, overheating, and range. My _very_ naive experiences
are that among consumer grade devices:
1. Some devices can handle more connections than others before they
start dropping connections.
2. Some devices can handle higher throughput - Several kids watching
youtube and me doing a download.
3. Some devices overheat and reset more frequently than others.
4. Some devices have better range than others.

Does this information seem valuable to deployments? Does the general
approach seem sane?

--
David Farning
Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com