Performance measurements of IEEE 802.11 b, g laboratory WEP and WPA point-to-point links using TCP, UDP and FTP

The importance of wireless communications, involving electronic devices, has been growing. Performance is a crucial issue, leading to more reliable and efficient communications. Security is equally important. Laboratory measurements are made about several performance aspects of Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 b, g) WEP and WPA point-to-point links. A contribution is given to performance evaluation of this technology, using available wireless routers from Linksys (WRT54GL). Detailed results are presented and discussed, namely at OSI levels 4 and 7, from TCP, UDP and FTP experiments: TCP throughput, jitter, percentage datagram loss and FTP transfer rate. Comparisons are made to corresponding results obtained for, mainly, open links. Conclusions are drawn about the comparative performance of the links.