Throughput variation also forced the Buffalo Technology Hi Power pair down toward the bottom of the WQS pile. This time, however, it wasn't downshifting out of channel-bonding that did it, since the Broadcom-based products don't use that technique to pump up their throughput numbers. Instead, Figure 22 shows the throughput "dropouts" that are characteristic of the Hi Power products. Even though they are very brief, the large downward swings in throughput result in large throughput variation that pushes up the Relative Precision value.

Figure 22: Buffalo Hi Power Location 2 downlink throughput
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A look at Figures 23 and 24, which show WQS numbers for uplink and downlink separately, reveal distintively different rankings for some products.

Figure 23: WQS - uplink
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The D-Link pair shows the most dramatic difference ranking dead last for uplink, yet number one for downlink.

Figure 24: WQS - downlink
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A look at the Relative Precision values in Figures 25 and 26 once again shows the reason for the difference.

Figure 25: D-Link 2XR Location 1 downlink throughput
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The throughput Super-G Turbo related throughput shift at the beginning of both plots may not look significant, but causes a 7X difference in Relative Precision between the downlink and uplink runs. So even though the Turbo-mode throughput is among the highest recorded for the products tested (averaging between 52 and 53 Mbps!), once again, throughput variation makes the difference.

Figure 26: D-Link 2XR Location 1 uplink throughput
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