Wlan Performance with WPA enabled

Click here for details on nl-5354AP1 A/B/G access point

Click here for details on the nl-5354CB A/B/G card

effects of enabling wpa

Configuration

We tested the new NL-5354AP1 with support for 802.11 super A/G or Turbo mode.  We used a nl-5354cb plus card in a HP ze4500 AMD Athlon XP-M 2200 on Microsoft Windows XP SP1 on hard power with power profile set to always on (full CPU speed).   For super A testing smart select was used and it picked channel 50.   We did not have any other 802.11a access points running at the time.

Results super a with WPA enabled AES PSK

super a no WPA

Performance  WPA

Performance  NO WPA


Conclusion

Enabling WPA places a small throughput loss of around 1mbps.  This is a similar number to our previous testing with WEP.  However even though AES is mostly done in hardware it does place an additional 10% load on the CPU on the client computer.  It is our opinion that the security WPA provides is well worth the small performance degradation.

 

Click here for details on nl-5354AP1 A/B/G access point

Click here for details on the nl-5354CB A/B/G card