D-Link Performace Series DIR-890L AC3200 Router Review

WLAN Performance: 2.4GHz 802.11n

The 2.4GHz band is the older of the two wireless bands that are in use today. On this band, we find 802.11b/g/n wireless standards with up to 600Mbps bandwidth on offer when using wireless-n compliant devices. Due to the lower operating frequency, 2.4GHz signals offer a wider level of coverage, but the lower throughput speeds are a disadvantage to this aging band.

Fixed Block Size

To test the maximum throughput speed that a wireless connection can handle, a fixed block size of 16384 Bytes is sent from the client to the server over a period of five minutes. The higher block size will allow the transfer rate to stay as high as possible – in the same way that large files transfer from one drive to another quicker than lots of small files of the same total size.

Variable Packet Size

In a real world situation, the blocks of data that pass through a wireless adaptor are not of the same size each time, so to give a more realistic impression of how an adaptor performs, the adaptor is once again tested at each range for a period of five minutes. This time, however, the block size will vary from 32 Bytes up to 16384 Bytes in increasing steps of 148.7 Bytes each time.