Can you suggest a device/chip fot more than 16 clients

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

hi everybody,

with IoT now we have reach the limits of some devices. i cannot connect no more than 16 clients to my APs. i have a main AP and a repeater to extend to a second floor for my home.

i know that exist mesh APs and as alternative i can add a secondo APs to extend my wifi network.

but i have a precise request, can anyone suggest some cheap device or the chipset to connect more clients?

i don't' have bandwidth requirements, some device are only smartplugs or Sonoff devices.

may be a good workaround to have different SID (with xx devices connected) to divide devices for example.

My AP repeater can share only one SID. can you suggest an AP repeater that can share more SID? does it exist an AP with this feature? Can openwrt custom firmware help for this feature?

in the next years i am sure that we will install more and more devices...... and this is why i am asking for a better device.

thanks guy!

2

I would bet it will be pretty hard to find a device that cannot support 16 times 16 clients...

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3

Check the Ubiquity access points that claim to support more than 250 concurrent clients.

4

who speak about 16 times....

for example netgear support 4 SID network. let me say 4*16=64 devices.... not so bad

5

You realize that there's still a single physical radio, regardless of how you partition it off (which concurs its own overhead)?

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6

If you don't care about throughput then look into a nice ath9k device. They're probably the best supported and they're cheapest.

7

What I meant was that 16 clients seems like a very very small amount of clients for any modern chipset.

8

There are two theoretical limits on the number of clients connected to an SSID. First the WiFi standard itself has a limit of about 2000 which cannot be increased. The default hostapd configuration has a limit of 150, this can be increased. If there is any traffic at all you do face running out of airtime with "hundreds" of clients.

I have seen about 70 clients on an ath9k chip with no additional configuration. Like @eduperez said, considerably more than 16 should be no problem.

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9

The ath10k chip sets, subject to the immutable limitations of the 802.11 protocols, should have "no problem" with reasonable, high-density deployments, given enough RAM. Some ASUS units with dual-ath10k radios unfortunately only have 128 MB of RAM and suffer as a result.

A reasonable number of IoT devices, if quiet most of the time, shouldn't be a significant issue for modern chip sets and drivers.

If they're "chatty", then you'll hit the 802.11 limitations. Adding multiple SSIDs on a single radio will only make the situation worse.

10

do you suggest units with at least 256 MB RAM ? because i searched into openwrt table and there are only few device with atheros and 256 MB of RAM.

many device has 64MB or 128MB.

what are the minimun specs?

bye

11

For a single ath9k or ath10k radio, or one of each, I'd recommend at least 16 MB of flash and at least 128 MB of RAM.

For devices with dual- or triple-ath10k radios, at least 256 MB of RAM is a minimum. These are typically newer, mid- or upper-range devices on the ipq40xx or ipq806x platforms.

At this time, if you are considering a mid-range all-in-one (~US$75 and up), I'd recommend NAND flash for its speed and often dual-firmware operation.

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