Working on an assignment for a customer doing Point-2-Point connections I early on found myself in testing mode searching for the value we could expect for our money.

  So I set up a simple P2P LAB aiming to test the good-put of Cisco´s Aironet 1700, 2700 and 3700 access points. The aim of my test bed where to see their performance under the most accommodating surroundings possible which means high SNR low RSSI low interference and low connections.

One restriction - it is only possible to control the speed of the link for abg rates not for ac and n is turned off in these roles. It was possible to set highest data rate but every rate down to 54Mbps would either just result in a 54Mbps link or not work.

How to interpret 802.11ac data rates.

Format: aX.YzQ     ex. a8.2-2

X = MCS               

Y = Spatial Streams          

z = b (beamform) or s (STBC) or - (none)

Q = Bandwidth 2, 4, 8 (20Mhz, 40Mhz, 80Mhz)

Autonomous IOS: 15.3(3)JC2

Band: 5Ghz

Primary channel: 44

2 x Cisco 2960-X

2 x Lenovo T440S with 1Gb NICs

AP distance: LOS 1.5m

Throughput tool: iPerf3

Socket buffer size: 65535

Cisco Aironet 1702i

Radios dual band, 802.11ac Wave 1

MIMO 3 x 3, Spatial Streams 2

5Ghz Max data rate 867Mbps

Average goodput: 109Mbps

Highest rate in test MCS8 with 2 spatial streams on a 20Mhz channel and assuming short guard amounts to 173,3Mbps theoretical and a goodput of ~63,6%.

Cisco Aironet 2702i

Radios dual band, 802.11ac Wave 1

MIMO 3 x 4

Spatial Streams 3

5Ghz Max data rate 1.3Gbps

Average goodput: 150Mbps

Highest data rate in test MCS9 with 3 spatial streams on a 20Mhz channel and assuming short guard amounts to 288,9Mbps theoretical and a goodput of 52,3%.

Cisco Aironet 3702i

Radios dual band, 802.11ac Wave 1

MIMO 4 x 4

Spatial Streams 3

5Ghz Max data rate 1.3Gbps

Average goodput: 149Mbps

Highest rate in test MCS9 with 3 spatial streams on a 20Mhz channel and assuming short guard amounts to 288,9Mbps theoretical and a goodput of 52,3%.