Metalink Ltd. has achieved impressive performance results in independent tests conducted by The Tolly Group. These rigorous tests benchmarked Metalink’s WLANPlus against three products using different 802.11n chipsets. The tests confirmed that the use of Metalink’s solution doubled performance as compared to the closest competitor tested, and in many of the tests by as much as ten-fold. These tests further position WLANPlus as the best-of-breed 802.11n draft 2.0 compliant product and the only one powerful enough to enable high-performance wireless applications. The full test report is available here.

Kevin Tolly, the CEO of The Tolly Group, noted: “To ‘push the limits’ of these chipsets, we introduced a new set of challenging criteria, including zero-loss tests as a necessary de-facto standard for the home entertainment space. We were impressed with Metalink’s WLANPlus, which clearly outperformed the others in both the 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz bands, as well as being the only chipset tested to achieve zero-loss in UDP tests.” Tolly added that the tests indicated that Metalink’s product also achieved the best results in TCP tests.

 

The Tolly Group’s tests took place in a large U.S.-based home (a 6,000-square foot, three-floor structure with a basement), enabling a wide variety of performance tests. The tests included measurement of throughput, full home coverage and transmission quality. These tests demonstrated that WLANPlus offers superior performance in the 2.4-GHz band (the band commonly used for data services), and that it is the only chipset tested which provides robust performance in the 5-GHz band (used for high-quality applications such as video and gaming). As such, WLANPlus has emerged as the clear best-of-breed foundation for 802.11n home networks with a proven ability to support the delivery of multiple simultaneous HD video streams throughout the home.

 

"The fact that the Tolly Group’s independent tests have singled out Metalink’s technology confirms WLANPlus’s status as the market’s highest-performing solution for wireless home networks,“ said Barry Volinskey, Metalink’s Vice President of Marketing. "Our product achieved the best results in both TCP and UDP tests, as well as in the 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz bands, making it the only wireless technology capable of supporting the new demanding requirements of wireless home networks. This further establishes Metalink’s positioning as a major player in the fast-growing home networking space.”

 

 

When I reviewed Metalink’s WLANPlus 802.11n-capable chip set (MtW8171/MtW8151) in December 2006, I was very impressed with the parts of its design that they would share with me. Despite their reluctance to share some details of their radio architecture, their apparent technical prowess and attention to critical details led me to predict that that it would probably deliver above-average performance (even if I felt they were overstating several claims about being first-to-market with several important features to improve throughput and range). So when I saw the Metalink release announcing their test results, I thought this would be a great opportunity to re-visit my earlier review and see how my back-of-the napkin analysis stacked up against the hard data generated by the Tolly Group.

 

The good news is that it looks like that these tests confirm my opinion that Metalink’s performance-oriented architecture really does give them a considerable edge over most other consumer-oriented chip sets in the market today. Unfortunately, this is tempered somewhat by the fact that the tests were not as well-controlled as they could have been and ignore several important issues that might at least partly explain the large performance discrepancies that they documented. (Please refer to this week’s networkZONE editorial for my critique of the Tolly tests).

 

But despite any issues I may have about the test methodology and questions about what the test results actually mean, Metalink is to be complimented on trying to focus the market on performance rather than blindly pursuing the absolute lowest possible solution cost. I think that the superior range, throughput, and packet loss rates that Metalink demonstrates are due in equal parts to the fact that they use a separate SiGe radio chip and a well-designed digital baseband section that uses a maximum-likelihood receiver architecture to provide 3 - 5 dB worth of coding gain. Metalink also claims to be the only manufacturer that makes use of the 802.11n specification optional LDPC error correction code which provides 2 - 3 dB worth of coding gain to your link budget.

 

It was not clear whether the Metalink-based equipment in the tests used the chip set integrated LNA or used the optional discrete LNA (usually supplied by Anadigics) that can add another 1 - 2 dB to the link budget but, regardless of this, the zero-packet loss performance it demonstrated seems to set it apart from the rest of the herd. If Tolly’s data can be believed, it indicates that the WLANPlus chipset really does deliver loss-free packet transfers at much greater distances and data rates than its competitors. While not conclusive, this strongly suggests that some other well-regarded products will have to do much better if they expect to be useful at carrying HD video across any distance much greater than the average suburban living room.

 

Despite the fact that the tests conducted by the Tolly Group were somewhat flawed, they seem to have produced fairly useful relative comparisons between several major chip makers that was not previously available. Based on these results, I’ll shave off a half-saltshaker from the 2-Saltshaker Vapor Index Rating I gave the WLANPlus chip set when I reviewed it late last year. But you should not take my word for any of this. I’d suggest you download your own copy of the Tolly test reports and judge for yourself. In fact, I’d welcome any thoughts you had on what they did right, where I went wrong, and what the data they produced actually means. Your comments are welcome at lhg at en-genius.net.

 

 

 

Metalink Technical Specifications