Clients per Radio in Wi-Fi 7

[ashmead123]

I note that the latest Wi-Fi 7 APs show a maximum client per radio as 400 (1200 per AP). This has increased from 200 per radio with previous generations.

I'm aware that this is a theoretical maximum, but I'm curious to know what attribute of the Wi-Fi 7 APs has enabled this increase in client capacity?

Also if I used to plan for a realistic limit of 30 clients per radio, can this now be doubled to 60?

Thanks in advance

[marce1000]

  - Ref : https://aletheatech.com/exploring-the-impact-of-wi-fi-7-clients-on-legacy-wi-fi-devices/
   >...The test results indicated a significant increase in aggregate throughput as the number of Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) clients increased. This is due to the advanced capabilities of Wi-Fi 7, such as wider channel bandwidth, higher modulation (e.g., 4096-QAM), and Multi Link Operation.

  M.

[Rich R]

> I'm curious to know what attribute of the Wi-Fi 7 APs has enabled this increase in client capacity?
You'd have to ask the Cisco BU that question.  I haven't seen any docs explaining this.

> Also if I used to plan for a realistic limit of 30 clients per radio, can this now be doubled to 60?
No I would not say so.  Since every client is likely to be using more bandwidth (as the article above highlights) and the software is fundamentally the same (meaning still affected by all the same bugs and limitations) I'd say play it safe and keep to the existing limits.  If you want to try going higher then test very thoroughly and make sure you soak test (meaning over days and weeks). The result will often depend on the exact profile of the client traffic.

[Scott Fella]

I think everyone wishes that would be the case, but look at just your typical mobile device.  You have been to large events and have noticed that cellular is slow as heck when there are a lot of people at the event.  What happens typically is they add more repeaters to help share the load, this would be the same as any access point.  I think what the BU did is just increase X amount of mac address the access point can handle, which differs from what the user would experience. Also keep in mind the attenuation when you go higher in the RF band, which also applies to the client side.  Maybe you can double the number of clients, if you do use 10G.  Sooner or later you will have more data to the number of clients per ap when folks do start deploying these with 10G connections.

[ashmead123]

Thanks Scott, yes I think you are correct in that it's more of an administrative limit of the number of mac addresses that can be associated with the AP. The capacity from improved modulation and channel widths has been increasing with each generation, it doesn't make sense that this has caused a sudden jump just in the latest generation.

[Scott Fella]

Keep in mind also, majority of organization will swap out current ap's for newer ap's due to budget.  There will be a time where there is budget, new cabling will be ran and new switches will be installed, that can help. Also, if you look at it, the density of access points every time there is a wireless refresh increases more and more, so its almost seems like you will have less and less devices per ap.  I know folks will say that everyone will have 3+ devices.... big deal as everyone only can work on one device at a time:)