Nice Recommendation for a WiFi router for 100+ clients.

[JLee]

Hello,

Is there any nice WiFi routers which can cover 100+ connections?

* My case is :
1. A router should be able to allow 100+ connections simultaneously.
2. Data speed will be very low - around several hundreds bps, always less than 1 kbps.
3. All clients are at fixed location (They don't move always).

Is there any commercial WiFi router you can recommend for me?

Thank you guys,

JLee

 

[thiggins]

Any router should handle this for wired clients.

How are the devices distributed and how far from where the router will be?

If the clients are 802.11b/g, you may need to try a few 802.11ac routers since they may have some interoperability quirks with "legacy" devices.

This is a case where an older 802.11n router might be a good fit.

 

[stevech]

I somewhat disagree with Mr. Easy on this. Many / most consumer WiFi routers lack the resources to cope with 100+ connections simultaneously. But moreover, the RF spectrum capacity is inadequate for 100 clients, unless they all have sleep Apnea 8^)

I'd go with one WIRED router (or WiFi router with WiFi disabled), one with a fast CPU. And if those users access the internet, you'll of course need a heck of a WAN connection. Or multiple routers each with a WAN interface to increase capacity.

Then add access points on different channels 1, 6, 11 to spread the client traffic load among 3 RF spectrum regions. (there are only 3 non-overlapping channels in 2.4GHz).

 

[thiggins]

Steve: Doesn't the very low bit rate help raise the # of STAs a single AP can support. It's sounding like an M2M applications, maybe PoS terminals....

 

[JLee]

Any router should handle this for wired clients.

How are the devices distributed and how far from where the router will be?

If the clients are 802.11b/g, you may need to try a few 802.11ac routers since they may have some interoperability quirks with "legacy" devices.

This is a case where an older 802.11n router might be a good fit.

Hello thiggins,

Thank you for response.

My condition is :
- Covering area is around 1500 sq.ft.
- All clients (about 100) are fixed, evenly spread out in that area (no move) and use only 2.4GHz 802.11 b/g/n WiFi (no wired client).
Therefore, I will use a few WiFi range extenders (APs).

In the last line, did you mean only one 802.11n router can cover this conditions if I ignore physical distance?

Best,

Jaeyeon Lee.

 

[JLee]

I somewhat disagree with Mr. Easy on this. Many / most consumer WiFi routers lack the resources to cope with 100+ connections simultaneously. But moreover, the RF spectrum capacity is inadequate for 100 clients, unless they all have sleep Apnea 8^)

I'd go with one WIRED router (or WiFi router with WiFi disabled), one with a fast CPU. And if those users access the internet, you'll of course need a heck of a WAN connection. Or multiple routers each with a WAN interface to increase capacity.

Then add access points on different channels 1, 6, 11 to spread the client traffic load among 3 RF spectrum regions. (there are only 3 non-overlapping channels in 2.4GHz).

Hello stevech,

Thank you for your interests to my problem.

As I replied, my condition is :
- Covering area is around 1500 sq.ft.
- All clients (about 100) are fixed, evenly spread out in that area (no move) and use only 2.4GHz 802.11 b/g/n WiFi (no wired client).
Therefore, I have a plan to use a few WiFi range extenders (APs) with one WiFi router to cover wide range(1,500sq ft) as well as about 100 connections.

Do you have any recommend to buy those devices?
And any recommendation related to set up this WiFi environment are really helpful for me.

Regards,

Jaeyeon Lee.

 

[thiggins]

I meant an N router might provide better compatibility with older clients.

As Stevech noted, if you need to expand coverage, you should use Ethernet connected access points, not wireless extenders. Extenders cut throughput 50% due to receive and retransmit of each data packet.

 

[System Error Message]

most wifi APs can handle 32 clients but can handle as many connections as you want.

 

[stevech]

Indeed, don't use extenders, a marketing term for 802.11/WiFi "WDS repeaters". Bad news.
Use 802.11/WiFi Access Points (APs). Their purpose is to increase WiFi capacity and/or coverage. Using consumer grade WiFi, use APs so that no more than 20 or so ACTIVE users per AP.

 

[sfx2000]

Hello,

Is there any nice WiFi routers which can cover 100+ connections?

* My case is :
1. A router should be able to allow 100+ connections simultaneously.
2. Data speed will be very low - around several hundreds bps, always less than 1 kbps.
3. All clients are at fixed location (They don't move always).

Is there any commercial WiFi router you can recommend for me?

Thank you guys,

JLee

No... most SOHO routers/AP's will max out at around 25 wireless clients - it's a CPU/Memory constraint... doesn't matter how fast the clients are, it's the number of clients...

Figure about 25 clients per AP in a dense application, and you want a router out to the internet that can handle that traffic for NAT tables...

sfx

 

[System Error Message]

I dont exactly know of particular wifi AP models but some APs can handle 100 clients but even with the low bandwidth utilisation having 100 clients will keep the airspace filled with useless packets. It would require configuration for both the APs and clients. The standard 32 client limitation isnt just a CPU and RAM limit but relates to the wifi chip and firmware trying to keep things using as little resources as possible. In a commercial environment have a dedicated device to perform firewall or NAT or authentication while have the APs open and only passing data but configured to work with a RADIUS server for example. Unless mentioned on the specs of the wifi AP you can also take a look at the firmware. Certain firmwares like mikrotik routerOS or openwrt are much more dynamic and open that they will handle as many clients or workload as the hardware performance allows. you can also overcome the limitation if you use 5 Ghz and all your clients are also using 5Ghz which lets you use approximately 10 APs in the same area assuming there are no other 5Ghz devices around.

 

[stevech]

25+ clients on one AP/WiFi router makes sense only if the usage of those clients is on average rather low.
Most consumer products can't sustain many simultaneous 802.11 client "associations" where an association obligates CPU/RAM/Chip resources. Some will dump the oldest association in order to take a new association request.