The overall performance of the entire network suffers because of the overhead associated with all of these administrative packets. If another bridge sends back a request for retransmission of a frame, the originating bridge can simply find it within its own cache and retransmit it. In the mean time, the originating bridge is able to process other traffic without having to wait for an acknowledgment of each and every transmission. This method saves bandwidth on both the wired and wireless LAN segments, and therefore increases the overall performance of the network. The 802.11b vendors have become very proficient at marketing their 11 Mbps radio products.
Companies seem to have lost sight of the difference between RF bandwidth and true data throughput.
Unfortunately, the 802.11b vendors are some of the worst offenders. Independent tests performed by PCWeek Labs, PC Magazine and Smart Reseller have shown more than one vendor's 11 Mb radio to perform with a real data rate of only 1 to 4.6 Mb. Not the kind of performance most network managers or ISPs would like to have in place between running a mission critical link between LANs. Tests by other organizations, including the US Navy, have shown even greater performance of up to 7.7 Mb. These results clearly demonstrate the efficiency and level of performance inherent to Wave s CampusPRC protocol.