This week I was testing the range of various radio cards in a laptop against an 802.11b/g access point. I found that the access point vendor (Proxim) changes the beacon transmission rate, depending on whether the access point is configured for mixed b/g mode or b-only mode. In mixed b/g mode, the beacon transmission rate is 2Mbps. In b-only mode, the tranmission rate is 1Mbps. I consistently found that b-only mode offered better range (about 20%) compared to mixed b/g mode. This occurs because the lower beacon data rate allows the radio cards to maintain connections at greater ranges (receive sensitivity at 1Mbps is about 3dB better than at 2Mbps). When deploying wireless LANs for greater range, consider operating in b-only mode. Of course this will keep b/g radio cards from operating above 11Mbps.

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