topic Re: Client per AP in Wireless

Client per AP

hs08 — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 06:09:30 GMT

Is there any cisco documentation or what best pratice count of clients per AP?

If an AP have 40 clients, can we say this still good?

Re: Client per AP

M02@rt37 — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 06:37:12 GMT

Refer to Cisco Meraki document:

In order to ensure quality of experience it is recommended to have around 25 clients per radio or 50 clients per AP in high-density deployments.

https://documentation.meraki.com/Architectures_and_Best_Practices/Cisco_Meraki_Best_Practice_Design/Best_Practice_Design_-_MR_Wireless/High_Density_Wi-Fi_Deployments

Re: Client per AP

Karsten Iwen — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 06:49:48 GMT

I wouldn't look for these numbers. It all depends on the situation. Twenty-five clients on Zoom calls can be too much, but 100 connected Apple Watches doing nothing can be perfectly fine.

Re: Client per AP

balaji.bandi — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 09:04:43 GMT

Its all depends on the model of the AP

new models - https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/9800/17-9/config-guide/b_wl_17_9_cg/m_client_limit_ewlc.html

Limitations

All APs except the Cisco Catalyst 9136 Series support only 200 clients per radio. If you configure more than 200 clients for these APs, the AP radios can still support only 200 clients based on the AP capability value.
Client limiting is supported on the Cisco Catalyst 9136 Series APs in FlexConnect mode.

Re: Client per AP

JPavonM — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 11:35:46 GMT

It is not recommended to follow the marketing values or the maximum values that the software can support.

The maximum number of concurrent clients will vary depending on the use case as @Karsten Iwen said, but as a rule of thumb, I prefer to consider the contention window as a more valuable limit. Having less than 16 clients is ideal to minimize the probabilities that multiple clients selects the same back-off timer. Next contention window is on 32 clients which is nice to have for standard office clients (not IoT devices or personal phones syncing in the background). Next one is 64 clients and from my experience this is too much as people start to complaint if all clients are actively transmitting.

To avoid a mixed scenario with guests, personal phones and corporate devices impacting performance, consider using 6GHz band only for laptops, and 5GHz to share resources for all of them.