[Commotion-dev] Some speed tests for ar71xx and ath5k devices

[Ben West]

Here are some results of speed tests I did with the two UBNT M and
FON2100 devices I had sitting around, using the version of the
commotion-openwrt from 5/18/12.  These download speeds were recorded
while connected to the public AP of each node.

I tried a couple variations of this 3-node mesh, one with a Nano Loco
M2 as gateway node (i.e. fastest device) and another with a FON2100 as
gateway (slowest device).  All repeaters were only 1 hop away from the
gateway.

Speed tests (via speedtest.net) with Nano M2 as gateway node
~15Mbit/s download thru Nano Loco M2 public AP (gateway node), which
is prbly the limit of my broadband connection
~10Mbit/s download thru Bullet M2 public AP (repeater node)
~6Mbit/s download thru FON2100 public AP (repeater node)

Speed tests with FON2100 as gateway node
~11Mbit/s download thru FON2100 public AP (gateway node)
~8Mbit/s download thru Bullet M2 public AP (repeater node)
~7.5Mbit/s download thru Nano Loco M2 public AP (repeater node)

There tests were overall quite favorable!  My immediate point of
comparison, the ROBIN mesh firmware based on OpenWRT Kamikaze +
madwifi, would likely only achieve 60-70% of these speeds using ath5k
devices.  Which is awesome!

These tests were done with all devices in the same room, so certainly
not realistic w.r.t. to RSSI.  I tuned the 2 UBNT nodes down to 10dB
output power, but I still saw reported signal strengths in 35-45dB
range.  Real world speeds might actually be better, since having all
the nodes in one room certainly was causing interference.

Note that the version of commotion-openwrt I used didn't appear to
have a working instance of dnsmasq yet, so I performed the following
steps on each node to get basic connectivity from the public AP:

- I manually configured my wifi adapter's IP address to be in the
101.x.x.x range used by the target node's public AP.
- I ran "/etc/init.d/luci_splash stop" on each node to kill
(non-working?) splash page.
- I also ran "/etc/init.d/qos stop" on each node, even tho qos
supposedly disabled.  Just in case.

-- 
Ben West
me at benwest.name