Accespoint for large number of users

[EdvaR]

Hi,

I'm looking to buy an access point to serve 20 simultaneous users with WPA2 enabled (would be nice if supported it supported 30 or so). Current Linksys WAP54G is showing its age and has some issues (users unable to connect to it or get kicked of from the network) when more then 10 or 11 join. The area that needs to be covered by wireless is under 20x20 meters and only with a couple gypsum board walls.

Any recommendations?

Thanks in advance.

 

[thiggins]

30 users on one AP is iffy. AP may not support it and if you really have 30 users on one AP, they'll all have pretty low throughput since they are all sharing the same bandwidth.

 

[EdvaR]

Hmm. I had suspicion that the throughput would suffer from the user count.

I know one of the solutions is to have a couple of access points and let different users connect to different access points.

I thought that with an business/enterprise level access point it would be possible to handle that kind of load (user count).

Looked at some a few access points, like: Dlink DAP-2690, DWL-3200AP, Cisco WAP4410n and Ubiquiti UniFi. Unifi said that it can handle 100+ simultaneous users, but I suspect that for that to work you need multiple APs.

 

[thiggins]

There are two things at play, limitations in the AP itself and shared bandwidth. Even if an AP can handle "100+" simultaneous users, none of them would be happy with the low bandwidth they would get.

Best to use multiple APs on differnet channels so that each AP has its own airspace and bandwidth.

 

[dunkin]

Then get two APs. Use a same SSID, different channels.