Router advice, aprox 100 clients.

[Remko]

Hello,

I have been plowing through this site for information for a good router that can handle aproximatly 50~100 wireless clients, but I havent found solid answers to my questions. I hope you can help me.

I have to create a wireless environment for max 100 clients. My initial idea is to buy 2 quality routers and as many accesspoints as needed to cover the area.

An other requirement is that every client gets a mac filter entry, so each routers table needs space for 100 mac entries.

My question is what a good router would be for this scenario, most routers cap at around 20~32 users, I need routers in the 50~100 client range.


Any advice is very welcome, thanks in advance!

Greetings,

Remko

 

[Trip]

Just curious, any idea of wifi bandwidth needs? ie. mostly lighter traffic, streaming-related, a mix of both, other...? That may play a factor as to what model/class of router(s) you want. On that note, any particular reason why you're thinking you need 2 (or more) routers? I would think a single good-quality SMB or higher-level router should be able to handle IP/MAC bindings of 50-100 clients at any given time.

For routers, I'm sure you've checked, but there must be at least a few consumer models lacking the arbitrary cap on IP/MAC bindings. Open-source firmware (Tomato, etc) might be a workaround. Otherwise, I'd go with an edgerouter (lite/poE), mikrotik, netgate pfsense box, etc. Way more capable and stable for the money. Actually, in a completely different solar system for the money. Then you can pair up whatever AP mesh of choice and away you go.

Hope some of that helped.

 

[azazel1024]

No.

Just don't do it.

No MAC filters. If you need to control access beyond a wifi password you need to setup an actual RADIUS server. Do it properly. MAC filters are not real security any more than WEP is real security.

As for capacity, most new/newer routers should be able to handle a hundred odd clients just fine from a routing and DHCP aspect. Wirelessly, it'll be crushed by that many (even if most are relatively idle). Spreading the load around with a few access points would help significantly.

 

[stevech]

yes, a way to distribute clients among access points evenly is needed. Only way I know of in consumer gear is use multiple SSIDs/keys and control who knows what SSIDs.

20-30 active client associations per AP is a practical limit for consumer grade WiFi.

 

[AdvHomeServer]

I've never built a network this large or a commercial netwok, but these are things I would consider along the way.

1. What is the purpose? Are all clients equal or are there several groups, some of which are not involved significantly with the others? If there is differentiation, then all being on the same subnet and/or vlan is potentially a bad idea.

2) Wired connections to wireless access points maximize throughput.

3) MAC filtering is a wretched idea. Even a simple radius server is far superior unless you're giving essentially one big mob wireless access, such as a waiting room. Then 1 ssid & password is ok.

4) Keep the design as simple as possible because someone else might maintain it someday. This means all 2.4GHz unless you know you need 5GHz for some reason.

5) how do you plan on making sure you don't get tagged for illegal downloads your users will make from time to time?