Router will change the WIFI network for the connected machines according to distance from the router

[sfx2000]

Wait till you are working with a large network, at 8 am in the morning your switches will become slow as everybody turning on their PCs will create a lot of broadcast traffic talking to your local DHCP server plus Microsoft's netbios is very chatty. By 9 am things get better.

I used to work with a network of 7 million subscribers

It's always busy there

 

[coxhaus]

I used to work with a network of 7 million subscribers

It's always busy there

I assume a phone company. Yes, when a network gets that big you become specialized. I moved down from 8000 PCs to 4000. I got to do more jobs because they are always short on network staff. I moved as a certified Novell server guy. I then moved into networking. They put me in charge of the network group after I did servers for a couple of years. They had network issues that I kept having to fix for the servers. This was 25 years ago.

 

[sfx2000]

I assume a phone company. Yes, when a network gets that big you become specialized.

Yes as a mobile operator, and I came into that as a generalist, so I appreciate the subtle optimizations as they can scale up...

 

[drinkingbird]

You will be creating a lot of broadcast traffic multiplied by the clients on your router every few minutes that will interrupt your internet traffic flows. You are kind of shooting yourself in the foot making it harder on your router.

I would not do it but then again, I would not run DHCP server on my router.

DHCP renewal is unicast, not broadcast.

 

[drinkingbird]

It all adds up. Personally, I don't think you should run DHCP on the router. It takes a time slice of CPU.
I run it in my switch and before that I used a Microsoft DHCP server.

Start reading in Microsoft documents. There are a lot of them. Here is one.

DHCP Server Operational Events

learn.microsoft.com

CPU in the router is far better suited for handling DHCP requests than a switch. Maybe that's why your network crapped out every morning.

 

[Tech9]

Wait till you are working with a large network

We are talking about home network here. Under 100 clients in most cases. DHCP lease time doesn't matter and L3 switches running the network are not needed. Everything is done basically on a single IC in 2023. It's quite effective, cheap and the performance impact is so small that it's hard to detect or measure.

 

[coxhaus]

At least you get the advise of someone that has worked on a large network.

You live on the edge and not scalable.

My bet is with 100 PCs you will see some of these issues. I would say more like 50 PCs you may get away with it, depends. Probably 20 or less clients with cheap equipment. 50 PC clients salaries would warrant somebody watching.

And doing something stupid creating unnecessary broadcasts is not going to teach you anything but bad habits. 10 minute DHCP lease times. You are talking hundreds of unnecessary broadcasts per device vs 1 per device. And that is just the half life. As it gets closer to the lease time it communicates more and more. I just don't remember all the steps as it has been 20 years.

 

[Tech9]

My bet is with 100 PCs you will see some of these issues

100x PCs generate the less DHCP "traffic" than 100x IoTs, phones, tablets, game consoles, laptops, etc. commonly found on a home network because they don't move in/out of the network. This "traffic" is literally nothing to worry about with any modern AIO home router. We are talking about KB in 24h period.

You live on the edge and not scalable.

Scalable to what on my home network? 2000 clients at some point? Unlikely. I currently have about 30.

 

[coxhaus]

I am talking about networking 100 PCs not just DHCP. These are 2 thoughts that you brought up when you were talking about layer 3 switching. The other issue is about DHCP leases for 10 minutes that you brought up also.

I guess you are having trouble keeping up with your own thoughts.

 

[Tech9]

You were talking about some "DHCP traffic".

Using a week for DHCP spaces out the traffic.

You will be creating a lot of broadcast traffic

You are creating more router traffic.

Not sure what are you talking about now. You can continue though, I'm out.

 

[coxhaus]

We are talking about home network here. Under 100 clients in most cases. DHCP lease time doesn't matter and L3 switches running the network are not needed. Everything is done basically on a single IC in 2023. It's quite effective, cheap and the performance impact is so small that it's hard to detect or measure.

Right here.