Need a simple wireless solution that supports a lot of users

Hello. I've been a long time reader of the the forum but now find myself in need of some wireless advice.

I recently took over running a small Minecraft LANparty that regularly consists of supporting between 20 and 30 connections from laptops, cell phones, tablets, etc. The current wireless setup consists of a Wireless-G WAP to allow access to a server hosted locally and connected with a small switch and router. At times when we have a larger number of users, we start to see wifi disconnects for the clients, which is very frustrating for a room full of young gamers. I'd like to replace the router/WAP with a single device that can handle that many clients. I'm not really sure if what I am asking for can be done, as wifi is not really my forte. I have a lot of experience in servers/routing/switching, but not the wireless networking. So if someone can help me understand the finer points of a a wifi setup like this, it is much appreciated. I am partial to Asus devices on merlin firmware as I have experience with that and it has worked well. I was looking at a RT-AC3200, but didn't want to invest the money if it wasn't going to solve my dropout issues. My fear is that 20+ wifi devices all gaming and hitting one WAP just isn't going to work well and that I will need some sort of multi-device setup with load balancing, etc. I'm hoping I am wrong. Thanks in advance.

The issue with your dropouts is because you lack bandwidth. When a physics based multiplayer game has more players the bandwidth and CPU requirements increase exponentially.

The RT-AC3200 will obviously solve the issue but the problem is that some devices wont work well being switched to different radios. Instead have multiple wireless AC APs with different SSIDs and get your players to pick a particular one to connect to. Ofcourse if none of your players use 5Ghz wifi than you're stuck with getting a 2.4Ghz wifi router.

With multiple APs the slower ones wont disturb the faster ones which is very helpful as well. Make sure to use non overlapping channels and different channels that have no traffic on them for both bands.

If it is all in one room use 5GHz and multiple APs using different SSIDs which you assign to keep it balanced. You may need a 2.4GHz wireless for users which do not support 5GHz. Once those users see the benefits of 5GHz they will switch their equipment so they can use 5GHz if they are real gamers.

Heck I would put a switch in the middle and let users plug in their CAT5e cable. That would be the fastest with no dropouts..

just to clarify im saying if you get the AC3200 dont use smart connect, Rather configure 3 seperate SSIDs, 1 per radio. For the 5Ghz, put AC on one and N+A on another.

System Error Message said:

just to clarify im saying if you get the AC3200 dont use smart connect, Rather configure 3 seperate SSIDs, 1 per radio. For the 5Ghz, put AC on one and N+A on another.

Click to expand...

That assumes that most, if not all, clients support 5GHz, which is an invalid assumption, wouldn't you agree?

Most AC1900 class routers can easily support 30 users - and minecraft isn't that sensitive to things... so maybe even scale it back further - the only reason why I would suggest an AC1900 class device is that the generally have better WAN/LAN/WLAN routing performance/capacity...

In a LAN party environment, it's actually better to keep common SSID's - let the clients sort themselves out...