[Klug-general] Limits on number of 802.11x clients?

[Alan]

Kev, Karl thanks you were dead right, not only for all consumer AP's, 
but it turns out even on meshing systems the advice is to ensure 
coverage that keeps concurrent connections below 15 per node.

We worked around the issue by installing a number of AP's and allocating 
people evenly to the AP's.

Hope I can make a KLUG meeting one of these days!

Alan

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On 06/06/14 18:56, Kevin Groves wrote:
> I would agree too many for one AP with all the hand shaking and such. 
> Any possibility of a few more and making a mesh?
>
> Kev,
>
> On 06/06/14 17:09, Karl Buckland wrote:
>> Hi Alan,
>>
>> Regardless of the issue of devices getting registered, I would have 
>> thought that 60 devices would be completely oversubscribing a 
>> wireless access point. On a 54 mbps access point in perfect 
>> conditions, those 60 clients would get about 900kbps each. Then you 
>> have TCP overheads on top of that. Even with a faster access point, 
>> the timing interference between all those radios trying to broadcast 
>> at once becomes a big problem. And that's with perfect conditions. 
>> More than likely, it's much worse than that. Are the devices that are 
>> registering working properly? I would've thought they would be 
>> struggling and you'd need at least two access point on different 
>> channels.
>>
>> Sorry I know that isn't answering your questions directly, but I 
>> looked into something similar previously and thought this might help.
>>
>> Karl
>>
>>
>>
>> On 6 June 2014 16:58, Alan <alan at hipnosi.org 
>> <mailto:alan at hipnosi.org>> wrote:
>>
>>     Hi all,
>>
>>     Running into a weird problem trying to use about 60 wireless
>>     devices simultaneously on a single ESSID and I wonder if anyone
>>     has some experience of any issues or limitations in this regard..
>>
>>     I am helping out a local cell of coderdojo.com
>>     <http://coderdojo.com>, as soon as more than 20 or so devices
>>     connect to their wireless, no more new devices can associate
>>     (even if existing devices get off).
>>
>>     Initially I thought it was a problem with the wireless AP on the
>>     cheap ADSL router, so I set up a separate wireless AP relaying
>>     the DHCP from the router (yes the router has a large pool -
>>     192.168.1.5-250). Still during the next session the same issue again.
>>
>>     Following that I installed a Debian box running dnsmasq as a DHCP
>>     server and NAT routing traffic on the AP to the ADSL router -
>>     what do you know, same problem!
>>
>>     The core issue is the inability of large numbers of devices to
>>     associate with the wireless AP (have tried a few different
>>     consumer wireless AP's by now - all with same symptoms)
>>
>>     The next dojo is tomorrow and I will be there to diagnose onsite
>>     this time, but if anybody has any heads-ups about large wireless
>>     networks I'd really appreciate the info.
>>
>>     Alan
>>

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