Performance analysis of Internet applications over an adaptive IEEE 802.11 MAC architecture

This paper investigates the performance of Internet applications such as web browsing over an adaptive prioritized IEEE 802.11 MAC architecture. In this work, we investigate the consequences of applying these adapters on www and e-mail applications besides the video conferencing application. OPNET is used to simulate several scenarios of WLANs operating at 1 and 2 Mbps transmission rate. By means of throughput, media access delay, http object response, end-to-end delay and other metrics, the performance of the network under study is being evaluated. The results show an outstanding performance for these adapters and in particular under the CWA (contention window adapter) compared to the original IEEE 802.11 standard. On the other hand, the results also show that the operation at high loads will have drastic effects on http application which manifest itself in very low throughput for such application.