Testing

We used PerformanceTest 6.1 by PassMark which you can find out more information about here. It has a handy Advanced Networking section which is perfect for our testing.

Doing our best to emulate a real-world performance scenario, I setup a server running Windows 2008 (x64) Server, (2x Xeon Quad Core 3.0 GHz 1333MHz FSB, 4GB DDR2 FBDIMMS, 2x 146GB SAS drives RAID 1) and the client PC was an ASUS G2S -X1 With built-in Intel 802.11n adapter. Results were gathered by sending data from the ASUS notebook to the server at different distances, with different adapters, and determining the average transmission speed.

We compared the ASUS USB-N13 adapter against the TRENDNet TEW-645UB, TP-LINK TL-WN821N, and the built-in Intel Pro Wireless (N) adapter on the MSI Wind 200U. All wireless tests were completed with WPA2 Personal (with the AES cipher as it has been proven to provide better performance) enabled on our TRENDNet TEW-673GRU router. The router was placed in the exact same position as well as the notebook at its various testing locations for fair comparison. For the access point we ran the same distance tests but listed them on their own to see what speeds we would achieve.

- Connection Speed

Our average connection speed showed as 220Mbps as long as we were within about 20 feet of the wireless access point. Outside that area, we saw an average of around 120Mbps up to a range of 60 feet. The Maximum range of the ASUS USB-N13 was around 80 feet; however at that range the speed was useless.

When we used it as an access point we found that the USB-N13 was not able to maintain the same speeds. Our max connection speed was just over 54Mbps.

- Bandwidth

Now for the fun part. To test the speed of the ASUS USB-N13 I chose three common working points inside my house. One was in the lab within 10 feet of the TRENDNet TEW-673GRU. The next was in the bedroom roughly 35 feet away and requiring the signal to travel through a wall containing the main house electrical panel and a "wet wall." The last was outside on the back porch roughly 45 feet from the router. Both the second and third positions were out of the direct line of sight of the router.

As you can see here, as a wireless adapter it is right up at the top of the list. It had better range than the others in the same class. When we played with the USB-N13 as an access point things went through the floor. I also had to setup the IP addresses manually to get the connection working.

I have a feeling that this would work perfectly with Windows XP or Windows Vista, but we hope that ASUS does come out with a version that works with Windows 7 soon.