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871W - Max wireless connections

HMidkiff
Level 1
Level 1

I have a 871W I am going to use for a conferance in hotel. There will be 30-35 users. Not all will be wirelss but most of them will. How may clients can a 871W support? I also have a 1242 Aironet. Would I be better using that?

3 Replies 3

jeromehenry_2
Level 3
Level 3

Well, 871W is 802.11bg only, while 1242 is ABG, so you have more wireless space on the 1242 if you configure the same SSID on both radios...

But the 1242 is not a router obviously, just a layer 2 AP, so you will need a router then...

30 to 35 users is about the max number of users I would put on one radio.

Why don't you use both?

:-)

Thanks for your reply. I think I will deploy both. I will put them on different sides of the room.

Lucien Avramov
Level 10
Level 10

The hardcoded max value is 255 clients per radio.

The theoretical maximum is 2048. As part of 802.11, however, some number of these 2k addresses are reserved bringing the IEEE maximum down to 2007.

Although the AP motherboard has memory capable of handling 2007 users, the

radio utilized in our 1200 Series AP has memory limitations which hold the maximum number of client associations to 255.

The number of 255 is active associations, though the cam table can

contain 2048 entries because of the memory size, the number restricted

for actual active association is 255.This number is still far too large for sensible

networking but what is possible. Remember that WLAN is shared media, all users have to try

to get access to the media by waiting until it is free and then sending a request to

reserve the media for the duration of the frame size that they want to

send. If the air is busy then you have to wait a random time and start

again. So if you have too many users waiting they can end up waiting a

very long time - sort of traffic jam effect at a congested junction, one

more car and the traffic seems n times worse.I dont know as to how the number 255 was

arrived at but it is largely irrelevant as 255 is still too large to be practical for

active associations, we recommend 25-30 for most design work.

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