Cisco Cisco Aironet 1250 Series Access Point Livre blanc

White Paper

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Key Performance Benefits of 802.11n

As the first company to introduce a Wi-Fi certified, enterprise-class 802.11n access point,

Cisco conducted extensive performance testing to help ensure that its 802.11n solution

lived up to the promise of the specification.

Cisco has led the transition to next-generation wireless. Cisco’s 802.11n solution, including the

Cisco

Aironet

1250 AG Access Point and the Cisco

Aironet

1140 Series Access Point, has

been the most rapidly adopted to date. This broad deployment base has enabled Cisco to work

closely with multiple customers both in measuring and in optimizing next-generation wireless

network performance.

Armed with an extensive stream of performance data, Cisco’s Wireless Networking business unit

has been able to compare lab testing results to real-life deployment scenarios. The results have

been more than encouraging, both with regard to the impact 802.11n technology is having on

network performance and also because of the business benefits this enhanced performance

brings.

It is well documented that wireless performance varies based on a variety of factors such as the

type of applications delivered over Wi-Fi or the physical challenges presented by building materials

or architectural configurations. Cisco’s lab testing engineers have consistently reached connection

data rates of 300 Mbps per 802.11n radio. This data rate typically translates to a throughput rate of

185 Mbps for sustained periods of time.

This white paper provides more details about the 802.11n performance metrics we have been

experiencing.

7x More Video

Video is having a profound effect on the way we consume information. It is estimated that video is

now approximately one-quarter of all consumer Internet traffic. Thirteen hours of video are

uploaded each minute on YouTube alone. In ways that are analogous to the transformation of

social interactions by social networking video, corporate video is enhancing the collaborative

experience. Cisco employees alone stream more than 73,000 videos a month, while they produce

and upload more than 1,600 internal and external-facing videos a month.

Before the introduction of 802.11n, a healthcare organization that needed to stream high-definition

(HD) video for mobile diagnostic services would be limited to only two HD streams at a time over a

wireless network. Even then, an 802.11g network would not be a reliable transport medium for HD

streaming video. Previous standards, such as 802.11b, did not have the necessary throughput

capacity for any HD video streams.

802.11n allows for the distribution of seven times more video streams than 802.11g networks

(Table 1). Such an increase in the throughput rate can truly mobilize applications such as

bandwidth-intensive, video-streaming applications. With 802.11n, organizations like the healthcare

provider mentioned earlier can dramatically increase the number of simultaneous mobile

diagnostics that can be performed. The result is a significant improvement in medical staff