Testing a New Access Point

[dubosegriffin]

Greetings,

 

Hope everyone enjoyed their holiday. Quick question - I just set up an access point downstairs in my house. My primary wireless router is upstairs. The second wireless router is downstairs (hardwired to primary router), on a different channel, with the DHCP disabled, and a static IP address assigned that is outside of the range of our dynamic IP addresses assigned by primary router.

 

My question is how can I test that this has created an improvement in the speed downstairs (by extending the range). I would think I could sit in one spot and test the speed with the secondary router inactive and then again with it active.

 

What do you guys think?

 

Thank you,

DuBose

[CA3LE]

Greetings,

 

Hope everyone enjoyed their holiday. Quick question - I just set up an access point downstairs in my house. My primary wireless router is upstairs. The second wireless router is downstairs (hardwired to primary router), on a different channel, with the DHCP disabled, and a static IP address assigned that is outside of the range of our dynamic IP addresses assigned by primary router.

 

My question is how can I test that this has created an improvement in the speed downstairs (by extending the range). I would think I could sit in one spot and test the speed with the secondary router inactive and then again with it active.

 

What do you guys think?

 

Thank you,

DuBose

 

You've definitely got the right idea.  Try to keep everything the same.  Before you start, have the new router ready to plug in.  You want to try to test at around the same time of day, closest to the same time as possible... using the same test server.  In your case you want to check the difference between routers.  To avoid network activity from other clients effecting the results only connect one computer to test with.  

 

Run a few tests, using the 'extra identifier' can make it easy to tell the difference between your results.

 

 

Give each set of results any name you want... later you can filter your results if you want to make it easier to compare.

 

 

Note: For comparison purposes I recommend selecting your test size manually from either the download test, upload test or automatic test.  You want to select the same size each time to provide the most accurate comparison.  Pick a size larger than SmarTest usually gives you... a longer test is better, 10 to 15 seconds is usually pretty thorough (Anything beyond 30 seconds is probably just going to waste your time and both of our bandwidth).  Selecting the test options that size automatically can produce more varied results than a consistant size.  ... again, like you said, less variables are better for what you're trying to accomplish.

 

After you have established a baseline with your current configuration swap the cables, turn on the router, change the identifier to something else if you want and test again.  You should quickly and easily be able to tell which one performed best.