I just bought a AP-135 to learn and test with. I have a Netgear WNDR4000/N750 (2 yr old) at the house also. I needed to do testing for an outdoor deployment that was going to cover a 200 foot distance. Everything was the same, APs within a foot of eachother, same switch and internet conection, same MacBook Pro client.
The capabilities of the Aruba over the Netgear don't even NEED to be discussed. It is obvious.
However, even when within 10 feet of the APs, the Netgear consistently had better throughput. About 15-25%. The Airport utility showed that when on the SSID of the Netgear the transmit was steady at 450mbps. And my download throughput showed that stability. Switch over to the Aruba and the transmit dances from 270 to 407. I rarely saw it flick to 450. The throughput also oscillated from 60%-90% of the netgear's.
I started with FairAccess, switched to DefaultAccess, and then PreferredAccess, thinking that might have been it. Throughput did appear to improve under PreferredAccess, but it always lagged noticeably behind the Netgear.
Any settings or gotchas with 450mbps performance that I might look for? I didn't expect to have lower throughptu being all alone on the AP. I do realize the AP may, over time, make radio adjustments but I assumed this throughput would be a slam dunk in this clean and clear situation.
I just updated the AP to the available code this weekend.
The client is :
en1:
Card Type:AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0xD6)
Firmware Version:Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 5.100.198.104.5)
Supported PHY Modes:802.11 a/b/g/n
Supported Channels:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 36, 40, 44, 48, 52, 56, 60, 64, 100, 104, 108, 112, 116, 120, 124, 128, 132, 136, 140, 149, 153, 157, 161, 165