Testing & Methodology
Testing a router’s performance is a pretty straight forward process from my point of view. I will first test the wired network performance with several tests followed by the wireless performance on each available band.
When testing the wireless performance I will adjust the distance between the router and the receiving WiFi connection from short over medium to long distance throughout my apartment.
Hardware
- Supermicro C7Z97-OCE
- Intel Xeon E3-1230Lv3
- Corsair Vengeance 16GB 1866MHz
- Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD
- Sapphire R7 240 2GB
- be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 850W
- Thermaltake Water 3.0 Performer
- Lian Li T-60
- Asus PCE-AC68 Dual-Band wireless adaptor
Software
- Lan Speed Test
- PassMark PerformanceTest Suite
Storage Drives
- Angelbird SSD2go Pocked 512GB
- Kingston SDA3 256GB SDXC
We would like to thank our sponsors for supplying us with the equipment needed to perform these tests.
For both the wired and wireless tests, I’ll be using both static and variable package sizes. The final test will be of the built-in storage ports such as USB 3.0 and eSATA with their file-sharing functions if they exist. These test together should give us a fair image of what the router is capable of. Possible USB 2.0 ports aren’t really needed to test as they always perform the same; slow. In this case there’s also an SD card slot which also will be tested.
While it’s easy to test and give you comparable view on the wired connections, we need to keep in mind that environmental factors can’t be avoided with the wireless signals. I live in a pretty big apartment complex where many of the residents have multiple WiFi networks. This will have a natural impact on the shown performance, but at the same time give a great view of how the device can handle itself in a heavy traffic area.
