Well I’m disappointed. I wanted to find out how much speed I could get out of the NETGEAR RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N Router (WNDR3300) , so I moved a PC right next to the access point and plugged a USB Dual Band Wireless-N Adapter (WNDA3100) into it.
So I’ve got a NETGEAR recommended solution here – two Wireless-N Products and they are literally sitting on top of each other. This should be the best case scenario for NETGEAR.
I couldnt even get it to connect with the default settings! 802.11N Channel 36 (5.180Ghz) must be a busy place. I must have tried 4 or 5 other 11N channels before I finally found out that I could connect on channel 157.
To someone not familar with this device (me!) it would be very difficult to get a 270MB connection out of the box. What I would do differently next time is make the SSID for 11G and 11N different, and then go about finding all the broken 1N channels in my house. Then I’d set the SSID’s to be the same and you’d be all set with a dual band AP. Good luck with that.
So connected at 11N, with my connection speed showing 270Mbps (looks impressive btw) my performance tests clock the connection at a measly 29Mbps. I ran the test a few times and got the exact same speed.
For completeness I configured the same PC to connect to the 11G SSID on the AP. The connection showed a perfect 54MB connection. I was really suprised to find out that my file copy test only got 9Mbps! The file copy test ran faster 2 floors apart than 2 inches apart.
I noticed that the NETGEAR packages have stopped making any speed promises. That’s probably a good idea when two 802.11N products 2 inches apart can’t get anywhere near 100MB Ethernet speed.
