User guide

5-8
BreezeNET DS.11b User’s Guide
Manual Version 1.0
! Compare the total number of messages sent to the number of messages
received.
" When the communications quality is rated as “Excellent” or
“Good”, the total number of lost messages should be zero.
" When communications quality is “Marginal”, the total number of
lost messages may be in the range of 1% to 3%
" When the total number of messages is >5% your network
environment will most likely suffer from performance problems.
In most situations you will see that the number of lost messages will increase
whenever the level of SNR decreases.
The different fields for messages received at the different transmit rates (e.g.
“11 Mbit/s”, “5.5 Mbit/s”, “2 Mbit/s” and “1 Mbit/s”) may serve as an indicator
for network throughput efficiency.
It is normal behavior for BreezeNET stations to retransmit messages that were
lost (either as a result of a frame-collision, or because the test partner was “out-
of-range”):
! If a message transmission fails, your station will retransmit the “lost” frame.
! If re-transmitting fails repeatedly, the station will switch to a lower data
speed
1
and try to transmit the message again.
The higher the number of messages received with the highest transmit rate, the
better your throughput efficiency. A relatively high number of messages
received at lower transmit rates may indicate:
! Inadequate radio performance, which can typically be related to the level of
SNR, or
! Network congestion. This may typically be the case when the SNR was
rated “Good”.
In situations where you see a lot of (re)transmissions at lower data rates, the
lower data speed might be the result of:
! A link test partner that is almost “out-of-range” of your Client Manager
station. This is easily recognized by a low level of SNR.
! One of the test partners is using a wireless card that does not support the
high rates.
To investigate link quality results in more detail, you can use one of the following
buttons:
! Advice - to display more detailed information related to the current link
quality and troubleshooting hints to increase performance.
1. The range of wireless data is related to the data speed. Radio messages transmitted at lower data
speeds will travel longer distances than messages at maximum data speed. In most network
environments, the “Auto Fall-back” transmit rate will yield the best performance results.