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Linksys Max-Stream AC600 Wi-Fi Micro USB Adapter Review

Test System, Software, & Methodology

The used router’s speed isn’t as important with an AC600 speed network adapter such as this. However, I’m still using the Linksys WRT3200ACM for this review. It’s a reliable router with matching MU-MIMO and beamforming technologies.

Testing the wireless performance is relatively straightforward and I’ll be using Passmark’s PerformanceTest 8’s advanced network test for this. It allows to define the connection type, packet sizes, and test length and as such, it provides a vast amount of information.

I will run tests with both TCP and UDP connections and both times I’ll run tests with fixed packets of 16384 Bytes and variable packet sizes from 32 Bytes to 16384 Bytes. Each of these tests will run for 5 minutes.

While the tests are easy as-is, there are factors that you should know about when it comes to wireless testing. There is no such thing as the perfect wireless test-setup unless you live inside a Faraday cage. Other wireless signals will affect the performance. I live in a very crowded area, signal wise, with 20+ available wireless networks at any given time. On top of that, there’s an enormous industrial complex area across the street which creates so much signal interference that digital broadcasting such as TV and radio over the air is impossible.

The things mentioned above will have an impact on our performance, and I used to think of that as a bad thing. I couldn’t show how well these devices could perform under perfect conditions as I can with anything else. But now I think of it as a great coincidence as it allows me to show how well devices work in a challenging environment instead.

Software