calculating the no AP required

[upen desai]

Hi 

I hope you can help, can you please advice what the best way to calculate the no of APs required for lets say 200 users with 2 devices per user.

Please let me know what formulas would apply.

many thanks

[Scott Fella]

I would say 25-30 at most for each AP.  This will provide a good en user experience. If you have wireless VoIP phones, then look at no more than 14 simultaneous calls per AP.

-Scott 

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[upen desai]

Hi Scott

thank you for coming back to me, but i really need to learn the method on calculating the no of APs required.

Can you please advise how to calculate it.

many thanks

[Scott Fella]

There is no real formula for this. User experience and what throughout do you require for each user. 

A simple method to understand this is know that wireless is half duplex. If a single user connects at 144mbps let's say, that means half of that will be the max throughout average for a single user. You add another device, then cut that in half because wireless is also a shared medium.  

Since you really don't know exactly what users will be doing and what experience they want, you have to decide what works for your users. From my experience, more than 30 users, people (some) will start noticing a difference.

If you want to get some numbers, then search on Google: 

https://www.google.com/search?q=calculate+wireless+throughput&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari#hl=en-us&q=wifi+throughput+calculator

take some of their numbers and figure out what works for you.

-Scott 

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[upen desai]

Thank you Scott for the insight, really helpful.

[Scott Fella]

No problem... Remember also, you are calculating based off of throughput which is theory based.  Complaints come from the end users:) 

Also, in a very high density, you need to understand how to tweak/adjust/manipulate the RF configurations to make it work well.  

-Scott 

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