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AP Capacities

Wes Schochet
Level 3
Level 3

I am about start a project to upgrade my wireless access points.  We have auite a mix of 1131, 1142, 3502 and 3602 APs.  I'd like to be able to compare the capacities of these devices in terms of throughput and particularly, number of users.  I am having a difficult time finding this information.  've looked at the data sheets with no real success.  Can anyone point me to it?

Thanks,

Wes

11 Replies 11

Scott Fella
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

You would not find that info especially with the older APs. Rule of thumb is 25 users per AP no matter what. The only other difference is the Ethernet port which would be either 10/100 or 10/100/1000. That will determine how my h you can push through the AP.

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPhone App

-Scott
*** Please rate helpful posts ***

WTF, Scott!

Someone gave you a "2" rating????  For the right answer????

Darn it man.  You need to work on you delivery!

RATED +5!

hahaha...Sometimes they don't like the truth:)  I guess I could of explained myself more... who knows... just here to help!

Thanks,

Scott

Help out other by using the rating system and marking answered questions as "Answered"

-Scott
*** Please rate helpful posts ***

Sorry to offend - but I can pontificate an answer off the top of my head too!  I was hoping for something a little more substantial. It's hard to fund a project with "well, a guy online seems to think 25 is the answer."   I'm sure  he's a bright, experienced guy, but I stand by my 2!

I understand... but this is wireless and you have to do your own testing to determine how may devices you can have on a given access point.  There is no hard document for this at all!!!!!!  You have to look at your oversubscription calculations like you would do on a switch to determine what works for you.  You also are comparing old AP's to the new generation 2 access points... you need to compare apples to apples.  Performance is different, but 25 is still the number no matter what.  If your trying to fund a project with no idea experience in wireless, well that would be hard.  In schools, there are putting one ap per classroom that can have 25-30 max students.  I have clients that double up AP's if they have more than 20 seats in a room.  So again... your best bet is to use the 25 clients per AP unless you are doing video and then you can lower your estimate to around 5.

Thanks,

Scott

Help out other by using the rating system and marking answered questions as "Answered"

-Scott
*** Please rate helpful posts ***

I was hoping for something a little more substantial.

I am with Scott.  There's no publicly-released document from Cisco's technical people.  The reason why I said "technical" because of the main functional difference between technical people and marketing people.  (Would you trust a used-car-salesman?  I wouldn't.)

And for the record, yes, the various marketing people have released documents with a higher value (much, much higher) of 25 clients per AP.

SOcchiogrosso
Level 4
Level 4

Scott is correct 25 users is the rule of thumb, however I just want to throw in there it also depends on the environment and the applications that are running. I did one deployment where the users relied heavily on a program using an oracle DB backend and had to keep the client to AP ratio around 10 to 1. Anything more 20 users in that environment would noticeably degrade performance. However every environment is different.


P.S. Rated your answer a 5 as well Scott!

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPad App

-- CCNP, CCIP, CCDP, CCNA: Security/Wireless Blog: http://ccie-or-null.net/

It's a dog eat dog world, Leo.

+5 from me =P

LOL, Richard.

Mark Baggott
Level 1
Level 1

Hi Wes,

You should probably approach your problem by determining how much bandwidth your wireless users currently consume per person. if you can get this from the radio statistics or estimate it from the applications they use. come up with an average and peak usage per person and use those numbers against the Access points total capacity.

Ie if each of my peak user consumes 45mbps and my average is 20mbps then i can get between 450/20= 22 users and 450/45 = 10 users per 3602i

and of course the wireless capabilites should be measured as half duplex links.

There are too many variables to consider for cisco to turn around and say, this supports x users gaurenteed.

mmangat
Level 1
Level 1

Hello,

Please have a look at this Access point comparison matrix:

http://revolutionwifi.blogspot.com/2011/04/wireless-access-point-feature-matrices.html

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