How many laptops to a wireless AP?

[Pam McLeod]

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but I read this as the number of supported WIRED connections!  Many of the wireless routers also have several wired ports.  I really don't think this is talking about signal strength through the air - I've never heard of a WAP which will support hundreds of wireless clients simultaneously. This is from the Cisco KB Wiki:
"Solution #  K47828638
Title  How many wireless clients an access point can support.
Resolution  The Access Point can support up to 20 clients (PC) or 7/8 phones comfortably, which depends on the application.
The AP has the physical capacity to handle 2048 MAC addresses. However, because the AP is a shared medium and acts as a wireless hub, the performance of each user decreases as the number of users increases on an individual AP. Ideally, not more than 24 clients ... "

I have tried deploying a laptop cart of 18-22 laptops with Linksys units (this was 3 years ago), and it was a dismal failure.  I got, at most, 14 on simultaneously ... when I deployed 3 AP's in the same room, I could get a few more on.  My understanding is that home-quality units are just not powerful enough to deal with that many clients.  Other schools have had better success, and it must be due to the construction of the building and the quality of the spaces in which the APs are used.

At that point, we deployed a Cisco Aironet enterprise AP (they are up around $500) and it was very successful.  We often have one laptop left out, but usually it just lags behind about 10 minutes (typically, we start up all of the laptops at once).  It is POE, so we provide the power at the switch and did not need to run an electrical outlet out to the location of the AP.

Since then, we have moved to Aruba Wireless school-wide.  We have a centralized controller (less expensive than Cisco) and it configures our APs centrally.  We are working towards overlapping coverage (>1 AP) in each area of the building in which we provide wireless access.

Pam McLeod
Director of Technology, Alton School District


From: gnhlug-discuss-bounces at mail.gnhlug.org [gnhlug-discuss-bounces at mail.gnhlug.org] On Behalf Of Ted Roche [tedroche at tedroche.com]
Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2009 8:45 AM
To: Bruce Dawson
Cc: Greater NH Linux User Group
Subject: Re: How many laptops to a wireless AP?

Bruce Dawson wrote:
> This site would indicate there's a wide variance:
>
> http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/component/option,com_chart/Itemid,189/chart,124/
>
> (Between 8 and 200 for various Linksys products - but the chart lists a
> number of other manufacturer
That's a handy site -- bookmarked! Thanks!