TCP, UDP and FTP performances of laboratory Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11g WEP point-to-point links

Abstract

Wireless communications, e.g. Wi-Fi, have been increasingly important in the context of networked and virtual organizations and enterprise information systems. Performance is an issue of fundamental importance, resulting in more reliable and efficient communications, therefore improving enterprise information system yield. Security is equally important. Laboratory measurements are made about several performance aspects of Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11g WEP point-to-point links. A contribution is given to performance evaluation of this technology under WEP encryption, using available access points from Enterasys Networks (RBT-4102). Detailed results are presented and discussed, namely at OSI levels 4 and 7, from TCP, UDP and FTP experiments, permitting measurements of TCP throughput, jitter, percentage datagram loss and FTP transfer rate. Comparisons are made to corresponding results obtained for open links. Conclusions are drawn about the comparative performance of the links. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.