Performance Tests of the Dynamics of the Wireless Networks

Performance of the dynamics of the wireless networks is the key parameter for real-time applications. This paper is focused on the performance tests of the WLAN IEEE 802.11g. New testbed for measuring of network parameters with 10 ns resolution was developed. Three main parameters of network communication in the wireless networks are bandwidth, delay and jitter. Knowing values of those three parameters allows us to decide if the communication network is acceptable for using real-time applications or not. For our future applications of wireless networks in automation platform we need to know precisely all these parameters. Based on the measured dynamics we can select which real-time application is for this wireless network suitable. Another problem of WLANs is their vulnerability to security threads. WLANs can be secured by several security mechanisms but all of these mechanisms have negative impact to the communication speed and final network performance. We also measured impact of used encrypted communication tunnel on the WLAN performance because VPN tunnel with encryption functions is one of the possible security solutions for our future automation applications.