TRENDnet TEW-687GA 450Mbps wireless gaming adapter

Testing:

We at TechwareLabs don’t take these wireless claims at face value. We are going to test the throughput of this adapter to see if it really holds up to its boasts.

Test Setup:

• Router TRENDnet TEW-691GR 450Mbps
• Computer: Gigabit to the route
• Laptop: Gigabit to the adapter
• Environment:
  • 10+ wireless access points within range
  • 1900 square foot home with aluminum insulation

There is a distinctive difference between MBps (megabytes) and Mbps (megabits). Megabits per second are used to measure the speed of a device. Megabytes per second are used to measure the amount of data. 1 megabyte = 8 megabits. So the maximum lab tested speed of this router is 56.25 MBps. Also that is in a laboratory with no device interference, and a direct line of site. The average consumer has hundreds of interference causing devices withing the range of their wireless router. In this environment, there are more than ten wireless networks within range of the devices, three walls between them and aluminum insulation in the ceiling. The same principles that allow you to boost range with a coke can, also wreak havoc on your signal strength and range.

I started off by running a file transfer test three times with using windows copy.

These snapshots are reflective of the read/write discrepancies between the two machines over the network. These speeds are in Megabytes per second.

LAN Speed Test:

Here you can see the signal quality from the opposite end of the house. You can also see the speed results of transferring a 100MB file across the wireless. It took just over 6 seconds to transfer.

This is where we started having some fun. My theory was that Wireless N has an effective range much greater than the distances I could reproduce in the house, so I should be able to deteriorate the signal artificially and receive similar results. I used a glass mixing bowl to cover the device, and using my hand I was able to get the signal strength and quality to drop sufficiently to test. Take a look at the results.

These results defy logic, except when you factor in the amount of signal interference described earlier, the glass bowl could have been isolating and eliminating interference. this is food for thought.

Real World Testing:

Synthetic bench-marks are fantastic, they give you a general quantifiable method to measure the performance of your device. But it all boils down to the question of, ‘will it perform?” This is a high bandwidth wireless router designed to give you the highest performance for your demanding tasks on your home network. The high performance tasks on my home network are streaming high definition video, gaming, and file sharing. We have already  tested file sharing. To test the gaming I plugged the adapter in to my desktop and ran every game I have, including Call of Duty Black Ops, Left four dead 2, and World of Warcraft, I cannot speak for my skill, But in three hours of playtime there was not a single lag instance, or hangup. The device also streamed full 1080p to my media pc from the back of the house with no choppiness or slow frame rates.

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