Upgrading 802.11 deployments: a critical examination of performance

The increased demand for communications and Internet access makes Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) one of the most popular solutions for network connectivity. In this paper, we examine the performance and the energy efficiency of WLANs in 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz and discuss paths for upgrading. Our results show that it is worth upgrading to the 5 GHz bands from the 2.4 GHz band for 802.11n, especially for applications that are sensitive to packet loss. We also show that it is little benefit in upgrading from 802.11n 5 GHz to its successor 802.11ac in terms of performance and energy efficiency. We consider overall performance as well as the energy efficiency of 802.11n 2.4 GHz, 802.11n 5 GHz and 802.11ac protocols, all with 40MHz channels, to give a typical 802.11 office scenario. It is clear that 802.11ac can achieve slightly higher throughput compared to 802.11 for flows of large packets. However, the comparatively small benefits of 802.11ac may not justify the cost of buying and deploying new equipment for the upgrade.