Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 B,G WEP Links

Wireless communications using microwaves are increasingly important, e.g. Wi-Fi. Performance is a most 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 802.11b, g) WEP point-to-point links. A contribution is given to performance evaluation of this technology under WEP encryption, using two types of equipments (RBT-4102 access points from Enterasys Networks and WRT54GL wireless routers from Linksys). Detailed results are presented and discussed, at OSI levels 1, 4 and 7, namely from TCP, UDP and FTP experiments: SNR, TCP throughput, jitter, percentage datagram loss and FTP transfer rate. Detailed comparisons are made and conclusions are drawn about the comparative performance of the links.