How many laptops to a wireless AP?

[Alan Johnson]

On 2/28/09, Ben Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com> wrote:
>   I can't speak as to the accuracy of the discussions, but they have
> been much more recent than that, up to and including within the past
> 12 months.  Given that I've personally seen LinkSys's stuff crap out
> under a 20 person load on *Ethernet* (let alone wireless), I have no
> trouble believing that a $500 AP does better than a $50 one.

I don't doubt it in the least.  I've seen the same thing on wireless
and wired routers alike.  Again, I'm just speaking to the wireless
bits of the devices.  There are only a couple of wireless chip makers
and the differences in quality are subtle these days, so, as you
suggest, it is more about the guts behind the wireless.

>   This isn't intended as a dig against LinkSys.  It's designed for the
> SOHO environment.  Using it for more is abusing the design; one can't
> complain at that point.  Not that my then-client understood that;
> hence the reason I have first-hand experience....

For the record, I don't have any hands-on 11n experience myself, but I
know enough to know when a review of a wireless product is
respectable.  The good ones I have read give me great confidence in
the 11n radios.

That said, there are certainly big differences in quality of the guts
behind the radios, but it is not necessary to spend extra money if you
know what to buy, particularly for this intended purpose.  Some
consumer grade stuff is crap, as is some commercial stuff.  If you
have money to burn, no one ever got fired for buying Cisco, but they
are by far the most expensive, and certainly not the best.  You will
probably not be surprised to find a lot of the Cisco quality in the
newer Linksys products (those released after the acquisition), and I
have had some Linksys products make me much happier than Cisco, wired
and wireless.  My only pause in buying Linksys is that it benefits
Cisco and I hate Cisco.

Another thing to be aware of is that Linksys, and others, will release
several different hardware revisions of the same model number.  For
example, their WRT54G appears to have 12 different hardware versions
associated with it.  I have a v3.0 that is at least a couple of years
old.  I had a v1 before that, and while it was good enough for the
intended use, it was junk compared to the v3 I have now.

One final note is that some features suggest more powerful hardware.
For example, a VPN router would required a faster processor and more
memory than one that cannot make VPN connections, a Gigabit LAN switch
might mean something more inside, or a 100-1000BaseT  WAN port would
suggest more capability than a 10BaseT.  Again, all of this is
suggestive only, but fairly so when comparing products from a single
manufacturer.  Best to go by the actual specs, but those can be a
pain to dig up some times.
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