single chain ´n´ CPE on dual chain AP; performance?

In a duo chained ´n´ AP network (so two antennas) how would the performance be of single antenna CPE’s equipped with a ´n´card (thus only one chain active) amongst other CPE’s that are dual antenna design.

In other words. I am converting existing 802.11a network into a 802.11n network. New clients get CPE’s with ´n´ cards but since I still have several single antenna units around and probably also would like to use the existing single antenna CPE’s I was wondering if changing the radio only and then only use one chain of the ´n´ card would still make these units usable in a dual antenna ´n´ AP-network?

Anybody with experiances?

They will only connect at single chain speeds, both TX and RX.

Seems to work fine tho.

Oldman:
Do you have experience with it?
In a mixed environment? So both dual chain (antenna) CPE’s mixed with single antenna units?
I get it that single chain units will have theoretical max. throughput of only 150Mb compared with the theoretical max. of 300Mb for the dual chain ones. But would the use of single chain antenna’s not have a negative influence on the data speeds for the dual chain ones?

If I would have an AP network with many single chain CPE’s, would it be recommended to spread the load on the AP’s chains?
Thus roughly 50% of the CPE use the chain “0” of the AP while the other 50% would use the chain “1” of AP?
Or would it not differ for the AP that all single chain units are working of one of its chains only where the dual chain AP’s would than use both chains of AP?

All of my CPE are single chain right now.

Single chain would take more air time than dual chain, but other than that I can’t see where it could possibly cause a problem running with dual chain. It is an interesting question and I’d love to find out for certain.

I don’t think you can share the load over the two chains. I just don’t see any way that would be possible. The two radios are seen as a single unit in the OS, even down to the driver level, just dual in hardware only as I understand it.

First keep in mind that all the equipment is half-duplex, and can only send to one client at a
time. this means its impossible to increase capacity by trying to seperate CPE’s by Antenna chain, E.G. 10 clients chain 1 10 clients chain 2.. the AP will still only be able to max out at 150 megabits total. it cant work that way :slight_smile:

If you run dual chain at the AP, if you run single chain at the CPE, you will only get
150 Mbits max air rate on that radio in any configuration… you would need all clients to have dual chain antennas to get a increase in overall capacity at the ap. The advantage too though is you would see higher signaling rates on all the CPE’s but if you had 1 single chain cpe connected.. the more that user is communicating, the less the overall ap capacity is.

Example:

User: Tx/Rx RateUp/RateDown CCQ Tx/Rx # of Chains

Client 1 -64/-62 235Mbit/270Mbit 95/92 .. 2

Client 2 -69/-71 208Mbit/235Mbit 87/82 .. 2

Client 3 -75/-75 81Mbit/81Mbit 82/79 .. 1

Client 4 -75/-75 162Mbit/162Mbit 79/77 .. 2


You can scale this up to… say 30 users if you want.. so say you have 29 dual can CPE’s with decent signal, and then one or two single chain (like Client 3)

When client 3 is downloading a 600 MB Linux distro at say 5 megabits, The AP has to spend twice as much airtime communicating that data, as it would with a dual chain client with similar signal strength (Client 4).

So really, all CPE need to be dual chain and good signal to gain most benefit from dual chain, so you can maximize the speed at which clients finish their communication. and will raise your overal max capacity for that specific AP…

So if you are trying to do a roll out of dual chain by starting with the AP, every user that you switch over will increase your overall bandwidth, and you will eventually gain your full capacity by switching your last client out with a dual polarity CPE. :slight_smile: This would either allow you to supply more bandwidth per subscriber to keep up with increasing demands, or connect more users to an AP, (especially W/Nstreme 2)

You are using 802.11a & converting it to all “n” network. I wanted to do the same with my 802.11b/g & convert it to 802.11 b/g/n. R52HN at the AP side with dual pol sectors. i was using b/g CPE’S so the whole network is clumsy now. Just ordered some “n” CPE’S single chain ..& i just hope they work good. but i still feel “n” wld work good in close proximity. For distant links again we will need more power/ LOS/ higher gain ant etc. etc. Lets see.