Re: Multiple APs

Antony Gelberg <antony@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> hath wroth:

Could you kindly disclose the maker and model of your existing WAP's?

Sure, Netgear WAP102.
http://www.netgear.com/products/details/WAG102.php

Does it really have a hard limit of 30 users or is that the estimated
number of users per access point based on "typical" traffic?

Hmmm... Looking at the above data ***, it proclaims:
"It supports up to 128 simultaneous wireless clients and
client types within the same coverage area."
There may be a 30 user limit in the bridge to bridge mode, but not the
access point mode.

The number of users served are fairly simple to estimate:
100 users doing light surfing and email.

I think that this will be the main use case. Netgear pre-sales has just
told us that the theoretical (as in defined by the standard, not
vendor-specific) maximum per channel is 32 users, and the limit on this
AP is more like 15 users in practice. How does that reconcile with your
figure of 100?

See above quotation from the data ***. Netgear pre-sales support is
wrong. Actually, I'm not even sure 128 is the real upper limit for
simultaneous connections. In a past life (about 7 years ago), I did
quite a bit of bench testing to see how many simultaneous users and
connections could be handled by various access points. Unfortunately,
I didn't test this wireless access point. Many of the units tested
would literally roll over and die when faced with too many MAC
addresses. It's really a question of how much memory is available for
internal tables and what algorithm is used to clear the tables when
approaching overflow. Sorry, I'm not at liberty to disclose models
and numbers.

I've actually deal with a system that had about 100 simultaneous
connections with a T1 backhaul. The assumption is that not everyone
is doing something at the same time. That's what I mean by "light
surfing" and email. With the proper application of bandwidth
management (i.e. QoS) to prevent any one user from hogging all the
available bandwidth, it is possible to run with 100 simultaneous
users.

However, if it's an office environment, forget it. Office computers
are always doing something. The average useage is much higher. Users
expect instant response time. My guess is about 10-20 office users
per AP maximum.

The one user file sharing is not a joke. Most file sharing
applications are designed specifically to maximize thrutput, which
means opening up huge number of simultaneous streams. That will hog
literally all the bandwidth, all the buffer space available, and flood
any cache in between.

Is simple user configuration not an advantage? :)

Oops. Sorry. It should be listed as an advantage.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
.

Loading