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

[Karl Buckland]

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> 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, 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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