I’m not entirely convinced that the TAN1 is dramatically better than using a high-powered USB dongle-based WiFi adapter. These are quite reasonable numbers for 2.4ghz 802.11n – a hair faster than the native Acer WiFi, but nowhere near as fast as the speeds delivered from the Intellinet 300N. However, the throughput measured via iperf showed that the connection speed was in the mid 50mbit range downloading, and the mid 40mbit range uploading. The TAN1 didn’t fare so well there – the range of the two devices was essentially identical, and the link speed of the TAN1 was lower due to its antenna configuration. That dongle uses dual antennas for send/receive, and is also fairly high powered.
I checked the Connection Properties, and compared them to the Intellinet 802.11n USB dongle from a previous review. The TAN1 isn’t claiming to be a faster WiFi adapter, although in general your speed should improve if you have a better link. We’ve also picked up one bar on the link to “no access”. This is interesting, The TAN1 picked up the Vulkano Flo in infrastructure mode that is 70′ away, and the 2WIRE389 from my neighbor that is ~300 feet/three houses away. “No access” is an 802.11b/g network.Īfter plugging in the TAN1, and verifying it worked, then rebooting for good measure and turning off the internal WiFi, from the same spot I can see the following: The distance to “no access” is 60′, plus three walls, two of them exterior. In my home I have three access points named, cleverly enough, “no access” “no access N” and “no access N5”. The internal WiFi on the Acer uses a low end, fairly average Atheros b/g chipset and two antennas (only 1 used at a time), so that’s about as poor as you’ll see.
Put all together and you see the problem with getting “more range” – you’re going to need to transmit at higher power (in dBm) and you’re going to need to be more sensitive to receiving the signal from a transmitter that’s not going to be transmitting at more power than before. A 3 dBm increase is roughly a doubling of power. The output power interacts with the antenna number, size, etc, to give you a power ratio in decibels (dBm) on the transmit side (higher is stronger.) On the receiving end, you’re talking about sensitivity, and this number is expressed as a -dBm. Typical 802.11, 2.4GHz access points or devices will max out at 1/10th of that, or 100mW. The limit for transmit power (from our friends at the FCC, who would prefer we didn’t bake nearby brains) is 1 watt in the unlicensed 2.4ghz band.
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