Let's see how the two wireless adapters match up to conventional, wired networks! All tests were run using Qcheck, one of the best benchmark/diagnostic tools for networks out there that I know of, between an Athlon 650MHz system and a Pentium III 1GHz system. To test each individual wireless network adapter, I set them to infrastructure mode and connected to them through the 100BaseTX network card that was in the Athlon system through a D-Link wireless access point (review coming up soon). Both wireless network adapters were positioned approximately 1m away from the access point.

Response time is critical for low-latency applications such as multiplayer gaming. Here, you see that the USB DWL-120 is the worst of the bunch at 7ms while the PCI DWL-500 follows it at 3ms. The two wired networks remained steady at 1ms or less. Although the difference isn't big, it shows that the wireless network adapters are, indeed, slightly behind wired networks in terms of latency, especially with the USB version.

Moving on, you see that the 100BaseTX absolutely KILLs all other forms of networking, whether wired or wireless. It's disappointing, however, to see that none of the wireless adapters were even close to their rated 11Mbps transfer speed--in fact, they're not even halfway there! At only 3.8Mbps, the USB DWL-120 is the slowest of the bunch; even slower than its cousin, the DWL-500. This is most certainly caused by the USB interface.

Well, there you have it folks, wireless networking is still not quite up to snuff when compared to wired networks. Although the speed has improved very signifantly over the first-generation 2Mbps wireless networking products we've seen in the past, it's still a whiles away. Fortunately, though, at around 4Mbps, it will still be useful for casual users. Internet sharing, print sharing, multiplayer gaming and casual file sharing are still viable applications for the D-Link DWL-120 and DWL-500 since neither of these applications require large amounts of bandwidth.

On to: Range