Max clients for access points

Oh, crap. I posted this in the wrong forum lol. Can a mod please move to networking? Thanks.
 
We have that exact AP at work.

There are probably...10 laptops on it and 20 iPhones/Androids. Using N and G. Seems fine but I can tell there are slowdowns sometimes - but people are downloading on our 50mb internet, syncing dropboxes at 5mb, and opening and saving Photoshop files on the server as well.
 
I'm by no means an expert when it comes to wifi but 10+ bandwidth hungry clients and you'll notice quite a bit of a slowdown according to my experience.
//Danne
 
Just because you can connect 64 devices doesn't mean that it'll wont crawl.
//Danne
 
diizzyy said:
Just because you can connect 64 devices doesn't mean that it'll wont crawl.
//Danne
Click to expand...

Well if I have 64 n-draft users each will have 4Mbit, and since its a dual-band, I can set it up to have max 64 on n-draft and 32 on G network. but there is Max 8 users on it at home :)
 
Depends on the model....and then, even if documentation tells you 8 or 16 or 32 or 64 or 96 or 128......it depends on the actual performance of the router.

Some home grade APs may claim 32...but you'll notice slowdowns at 3....and severe slowdowns at 4 or 6.

Move up some some business class models like HP Procurves...they may claim 96...but you probably won't see slowdowns until over a dozen or more.
 
When I was doing a build-out for a school a few years ago, the Cisco tech I worked with said they recommend 25 clients per AP. That was for the 1131ag aps with a 4400 controller.
 
Those Cisco ones like in the OP are complete shit. Look into Unifi. They can easily handle 30 clients per WAP.
 
I have the 4410 (used to have two, one died) and have never been impressed with the performance. Take a look at the WAP321- a little more, but money well spent IMO.
 
Unless you have a specific need, like high client density in an auditorium, you really only have two good choices these days.

Unifi/Unifi-Pro if you need wifi, Cisco APs/Controllers if you need enterprise Wifi.

Everything else isn't as good for the price/service.
 
I push 1142n's, 3502n's, and 1252n's with a 5508 controller if they can afford it. Do your self a favor, don't buy that crap in the original post. Spend the money and do it right. I tell my clients that these ap's will do 20 clients doing heavy traffic as that is what my cisco engineer told me when i started into cisco wireless.
 
We are non-profit so we are on a very low budget. We have to buy from certain vendors so it limits our options.

We use this as a controller:

http://www.valuepointnet.com/controllers-nc-3500.php

There is no way around that. It interfaces specifically with our database for authentication.

We have two rooms side by side. They have 10 laptops each in them.

Across the building (as in 1000 feet away), we have another two rooms side by side. One room has 20 laptops, another 10.

I may be able to make the case for something like the WAP321 that RocketTech recommended, but getting into the $300+ access points is going to be impossible.
 
Yeah, I can't find an approved vendor that carries them or that will special order. This legal crap sucks. Could literally find a product for a $20 at a non-approved vendor but have to buy it for $80 from an approved vendor. Makes no sense.
 
The AP the OP posted is common residential crap, and will probably roll over and die around 4 active users 8-12 inactive users max.

The new Cisco WAP321 and Ubiquiti Unifi's can handle 30 active users and a higher number of non-active users.
 
While I'm not arguing that this is the best way to go but have in mind that Unifi-APs uses pretty much the same hardware as a 30$ router I somewhat doubt its greatness lies in the hardware itself. Given that is uses Atheros SoC I would expect that ath9k is just and performs just as good as with any other network gear...
//Danne
 
Business grade 802.11g access points can handle around 15 users before things get very bad. Not sure on consumer APs, nor about the newer 802.11n stuff. I'm sure dual radios and smarter client adapters could change that number.
 
This question is like asking how many users can share a 10mbit internet pipe.

We've had AP's with over 40 clients connected and had no issues.
We've had AP's with 5 clients connected and had issues.

There is a saying in wireless, and you would do well to learn it and repeat it whenever problems arise and people want answers. The saying is " I can give you 5 reasons why your wireless is having problems, but I can't give you just 1."
 
Eickst said:
This question is like asking how many users can share a 10mbit internet pipe.
Click to expand...

Apply fair querying and you can get quite far.... although I don't think the 10240 users each getting 1KB/s are going to enjoy it much.
 
Mackintire said:
Apply fair querying and you can get quite far.... although I don't think the 10240 users each getting 1KB/s are going to enjoy it much.
Click to expand...

Actually my idea of fair in that scenario is 10239 users getting 512b/s and 1 user (me) getting 5mbps.....
 
Eickst said:
We've had AP's with over 40 clients connected and had no issues.
We've had AP's with 5 clients connected and had issues.
Click to expand...

This is true, as it depends on what those users are doing at the moment. But to the OP's point for planning purposes, I would allocate 15 users per AP if you expect them to be used most of the time. If you expect your users to plug in and just use wireless as a "convenience" like for conference rooms, you could allocate up to 20. I think 30 is out of the question.
 
/usr/home said:
Have you even used them? UBNT makes solid gear.
Click to expand...

I knew this kind of comment / claim would be mentioned within a short period of time, my point is that it probably isn't all that different when it comes to wireless performance especially since it uses consumer hardware. The administration software is of course different but that's not related the wireless performance itself. So in short, just because something is "cheap" doesn't imply that it performs poorly although it may / may not be suitable depending on application. Although if you have some programming skills you could most likely make a simple control application for a bunch of openwrt devices.
//Danne
 
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Alright, I think I have them convinced to get Cisco Aironet 1142. I noticed there are two versions, stand-alone and controller-based. We do not have a Cisco LAN controller at the moment. If we get the stand-alone, can it be converted to controller-based? Or if I get the controller-based, can it be used as stand-alone until we get one?

We were able to get them through TechSoup for $80!

http://home.techsoup.org/Stock/Pages/Category.aspx?category=CiscoAironet1140Wireless
 
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