Possible ASUS Solution

[JB Dial]

At our Church, I have recently changed the telecom services. The current provider is Charter and as many may know, they will not allow you to configure or control the device they provide. Therefore I am seeking a device to put on the inside of their device to function as a router. There are only 10-12 clients connected in total and during the week, half of them are active.

However, on Sundays, we have approx. 5 AP's spread out through our facility that are hard wired back to the switch which is connected to the router. On a given Sunday, we could have up to 50 clients connected.

My question is, can a device such as the ASUS RT-AC68U handle that number of devices without an issue?

Thanks

 

[Cloud200]

You have the right idea.
The question is how many devices per WAP, not just how many devices on site total.
In addition, are you sure you want to have 5x individually management access points vs a model of WAP that can either use a controller or sync changes between themselves?

 

[JB Dial]

I understand what you are saying. The priority is the office staff, not the church members having wifi on Sundays. I have been asked to assist with all of the IT needs and they are understanding they have to budget and put some priority to IT whereas it was never done before. So, I am making small steps. The 1st was to get a capable business Telecom connection into the church. We have other plans such as install Active Directory, home drives, backups, possibly wifi etc...But only have a small budget right now so I mainly want to ensure the office will maintain a connection and do so with minimal costs right now.

 

[Cloud200]

Site on a shoe string budget, got it.

Technically an RT-AC68 can handle 10-15 users loaded between each of its radios. Set them to access point mode. Disable any unnecessary services such as the USB port and FTP server.

Set the 2.4 to 20mhz, only using channels 1,6,11 and try to avoid overlap.

5ghz should be set to 40mhz, only using channels 36,44,149,157. Again, avoid overlap.

You have two choices from here.
Dedicated 2.4 and 5ghz SSID.
Distinct SSID per cell or a single SSID across all cells.
Personally I take the middle ground.

Every WAP is to be programmed with the same SSID on 2.4ghz with the same WPA2 pass.
On the 5ghz every WAP gets the SSID plus location as a suffix.

Eg.
2.4: JB Dial WiFi
5g: JB Dial WiFi kitchen

 

[Mokers]

For what you are looking to do, the ASUS should be able to hand out that number of IP addresses without too much of a problem. We are assuming your 50 clients are all trying to stream HD video content of course. Like Cloud200 said, your biggest problem will be that you have no control of any of the APs, so you could end up with more clients on an AP than it can handle.

 

[coxhaus]

If you are going to use Active Directory do not use DHCP on a router. Use Microsoft DHCP with Active Directory. You also will want to use Microsoft DNS with Active Directory so just plan on it. Otherwise you will be repairing Active Directory all the time.

If you are going to run multiple APs I would use Cisco's small business WAPs. They are easy to setup and kind of create a small mesh type network. There are others out there that will work but this is what I use. This will be a better system than a bunch of routers connected together.

 

[RMerlin]

BTW, note that there are cheaper alternatives to a Windows server now. Some NAS such as QNAP can now run as domain controllers, at a fraction of the cost for a Windows server + CALs. It will also be less expensive to maintain than a full-blown Windows server.